“You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.”

“How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing? How much courage to go on and do that after you've spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, "I have to quit these peas. Peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans.”

“Six hundred summers, she reflected.Six hundred snowy winters. Thirty-five generations of mortalhumanity. And finally, again…the sun.”

“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“Liar. You've loved me since I held your hand at your mother's memorial service when you were five years old.”