“She stroked one of the geranium's petals, inhaling its particular bitter fragrance, which she admired for its bold air of unapology.”

“You've given her a new lease on life.''She didn't need one. She owns life.”

“The Fourth was perfect. She'd make a ceremony, an event, of this. She had a bad habit of never giving ceremony its due. But sometimes life demanded ceremony. Sometimes you owed that to yourself.”

“She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land--wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on it's landscape for a moment in time.”

“She walked, and with each step she let another inch of the long furl of her expectations go. The place itself was like a steady hand, a low voice, a very old person who'd seen too much to get overexcited anymore. Stop now a minute, it said. Stop searching.”

“Looking out toward the open water she thought they could have floated in time, landed anywhere in the last thousand years.”

“The basket would never make her famous or end up in a museum. The best part of it was the making of it, sitting at the table weaving while outside the lake crashed into shore and the seagulls roosted somewhere for the night and two women stopped for a moment to watch.”