“Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke.”

“It was a child's awareness, never spoken or even fully acknowledged, but deeply felt.”

“She did not care about anything very much. Hope was gone. She existed that was all.”

“She had discovered that her love of knowing was not unnatural or sinful but the direct consequence of a God-given ability to reason.”

“Who was to know what went on in a person's heart? A wise woman kept her own counsel.”

“The bud of a rose grows in darkness. It knows nothing of the sun, yet it pushes at the darkness that confines it until at last the walls give way and the rose bursts forth, spreading its petals into the light. I love him.”

“What is life? The joy of the blessed, the sorrow of the sad, and a search for death. And what is death? An inevitable happening, an uncertain pilgrimage, the tears of the living, the thief of man.”