“By all the rules of modern fiction there should have been gunsmoke mingling its acrid blue with the brown haze of corral dust. Dead men should have fallen and been trampled...Nothing of this sort happened.”

“When you think of it, people may rub elbows and still have an ocean or two between them.”

“Use your head for something more than to give your hat a ride, can't you?”

“Agatha surveys the garden, its rows of crinkled spring cabbages and beanstalks entwining bowers of hawthorn and hazel. The rosemary is dotted with pale blue stars of blossom and chives nod heads of tousled purple. New sage leaves sprout silver green among the brittle, frost-browned remains of last year's growth. Lily of the valley, she thinks, that will be out in the cloister garden at Saint Justina's by now.”

“When we say we have given up hope, all we are really doing is challenging Madame Fortune to prove us wrong.”

“One night when the moon was full, I explained to you about how the moon controls the tides, and you said I was like the moon and you were the sea, always following me about. And I said nothing, because I knew it was truly the other way around.”

“Close your eyes. Grab a hand. And jump! Your destiny is waiting for you at the bottom!”