"The slowing, we soon came to understand, had altered gravity" (Chapter 3, p. 26).

"But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown" (Chapter 3, p. 29).

"Maybe everything that happened to me and to my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It's possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much" (Chapter 4, p. 34).

"I could tell he was hoping not to scare us, but that was the thing: We kids were not as afraid as we should have been. We were too young to be scared, too immersed in our own small worlds, too convinced of our own permanence" (Chapter 5, p. 45).

"Amid all this newness, my grandfather's dusty acre persisted, invisible, like a patch of dark matter: You could tell it existed from the way...