“Drowning yourself won't help, she told herself sternly. Now, drowning Will, on the other hand...”

“If she let herself, she’d drown in a world of pain”

“She wanted George with some uncorrelated sector of Her Gart, she wanted George to correlate for her, life here, there. She wanted George to define and to make definable a mirage, a reflection of some lost incarnation, a wood maniac, a tree demon, a neuropathic dendrophile...She wanted George to make the thing an integral, herself integrity. She wanted George to make one of his drastic statements that would dynamite her world away for her. She wanted this, but even as she wanted it she let herself sink further, further, she saw that her two hands reached toward George like the hands of a drowned girl. She knew she was not drowned. Where others would drown-lost, suffocated in this element-she knew that she lived. She had no complete right yet to this element, hands struggled to be pulled out. White hands waved above the water like sea spume or inland-growing pond flowers...She wanted George to pull her out, she wanted George to push her in, let Her be drowned utterly.”

“A drowning person doesn't rescue herself.”

“You're beginning to make a habit of trying to drown yourself, Grace. I hope from now on you will try to restrain yourself.”

“Some people, I saw, had drowned right away, and some people were drowning in slow motion, drowning a little bit at a time, and would be drowning for years. And some people, like Mick, had always been drowning, they just didn’t know what to call it until now.”