“every March Frankloses his circle of friendshe's in the backyardface in handssurrounded by sevencarrots and sevencorncob pipes in sevenpuddles of water withfourteen eyesmade outof coal”

“Every time you warm yourself in front of a hot coal stove, remember the coal miners in the cold dark corridors and pray for them!”

“Inside every lump of coal there's a diamond waiting to get out.”

“Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was.”

“Her name was a silent song on his lips. Her love was like a circle in the water, radiating ever outward, inevitably encompassing even the remotest of hearts.”

“I’d noticed that his eyes were black – coal black.”