“I marked a map for every deathFor every ache and blowMy world was all a page of blackWith nothing left but snow.”

“Is that all we have left? Is that all we are? Lights on a map that are slowly dying, hanging on for nothing?”

“Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”

“Snow not falling but flying sidewise, and sudden, not signaled by the slow curdling of clouds all day and a flake or two drifting downward, but rushing forward all at once as though sent for. (The blizzard of '36 had looked like that.) And filling up the world's concavities, pillowing up in the gloaming, making night light with its whiteness, and then falling still in every one's dreams, falling for pages and pages... ("Novelty")”

“Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world.”

“Even as she'd been writing it, she wondered if she was using too many exclamation marks, but she was glad she left them in. Nothing says "all is good in the world" like exclamation marks, after all.”