“See the child.”

“See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.”

“He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.”

“In the night's in their thousands to dream the dreams of a child's imaginings, worlds rich or fearful such as might offer themselves but never the one to be.”

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.”

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

“What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream”