“Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.”

“...when he walks, he sounds like a tree still full of dead leaves holding on.”

“I'm falling for you, but I can't do this if your still hung up on a dead guy...you can still love him and love me, but you won't let yourself, Becca.”

“He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life.”

“A curve of silver hung amid the brighter specks; it looked to me like a curved dagger, pretty but deadly, as if it might slice the sky in two.”

“When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny - the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs an flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering - spirits that's been dead ever so many years - and you always think they're talking about you. ”