“We lost our everything,she said, which said everythingabout loss. My accumulationdictates my ruin; it’s differentfrom your dismantling, which can happen slowly or all at once.What’s crucial is a totalinventory, which may revealsome one element not obliterated.We lost our everything,she said—we—she repeated,meaning the we-ness remained,which in the end must be the seedof re-beginning, the seed that divines the plow, the ounceof dirt, the memory of digging.”

“The other fish think me proudor discontented with my station.The birds think I'm beneath them.Even submerged I am outof my element, which I fearthe Lord in his hasteforgot to invent. I senta letter to him once, pleading:make me this or make me that,limbo is hell upon a fish.I got a message back. It read:Don't despair, I made you purposelythat way—bounding breathlessinto space, the way I madeAdam and Eve, flittingbetween the field and ruined gardensof each other's airy arms.”

“So, are you telling me we're lost?""Not yet," Eli said."But you have no idea where we are.""Not really.""That means 'lost' in my book," Sam said. "What's the difference between having no idea where we are and being lost?""Having no idea where we are on the lake is one thing, but if I can get a clue about which direction is which, then I will know which way to go," Eli said."Still sounds like lost to me," Sam muttered.”

“In the end I believe that we all choose our own paths. The elements may be there to influence how we clear the roughage, but it’s our own hearts that guide which direction we go.”

“We create things to watch them grow, Ruin, she said. To take pleasure in seeing that which we love become more than it was before.”

“We are all monsters" Hannah said. "Because we are letting it happen." She said it not as if she believed it but as she were to repeat something she had heard before.”

“We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes," he said. "But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.”