The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o' clock. (Chapter 1)

O Sugarman done fly away / Sugarman done gone / Sugarman cut across the sky / Sugarman gone home.... (Chapter 1)

Other than the bright and roving eyes of Magdalene called Lena and First Corinthians, the Packard had no real lived life at all. So they called it Macon Dead's hearse. (Chapter 2)

It was all very tentative, the way he looked, like a man peeping around a corner of someplace he is not supposed to be, trying to make up his mind whether to go forward or to turn back. (Chapter 3)

Why couldn't anybody in his whole family just be normal? (Chapter 5)

My name's Macon; I'm already dead. (Chapter 11)

When he went home that evening, he walked into the house on Not Doctor Street with almost none of the things he'd taken with him. But he... (Chapter 15)