which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat's just done. - Annie Proulx

As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped.

He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.

the old place of the Quoyles, half ruined, isolated, the walls and doors of it pumiced by stony lives of dead generations. The aunt felt a hot pang. Nothing would drive them out a second time.