Susan Mann

“Only wings evade death. Neruda says so.' As he turns the page he looks at Zara and makes his bright blue eyes big. 'And Neruda knows.' He reaches for his pipe.Zara stares at him for some time. 'Was he a friend of God?'Who? Neruda?'Yes.'He may have been, I'm not sure, petite. For all we know he may even have been God.”

“The earth. Silently spinning, falling, breaking, reforming each and every millionth of a second. The earth, whose conspiracy it is to give everything it has, to offer up itself and only itself, and all of itself. Then to take back, one at a time, all it has given, every richness, every fragment, every follicle, folding it deep into the furnace of its heart, in a cold and perfect contract.”

“Does the soul have a passport? Or do you simply pick the branch of the family tree that you prefer, with its preferred location, and hang your history on it?”