“Now she realized that she was not peering at a so-dark-blue-it-looked-black ocean, but rather she was looking straight through miles of incredibly clear water at something enormous and black in its nethermost depths. Maybe it was the bottom--so deep that not even light could touch it.And yet, down in those impossible depths, she thought she could see tiny lights sparkling. She stared uncertainly at the tiny glimmerings. They seemed almost like scattered grains of sand lit from within; in some places they clustered like colonies, faint and twinkling.Like stars...”

“Even in the darkness of the closed box she felt trapped inside, she could see light shining in through tiny holes on the lid.They were like the stars beckoning her towards a place where all would be simple . . . away from the shadows, away from the darkness.”

“Her expression almost never changed. Made it hard to tell what she was thinking. But also made her seem separate from the rest of the world. It was like she lived so deep in the ocean even lightcouldn’t reach her. Like a fish that couldn’t see the dark lonely depths, because it was always dreaming about sunlight.”

“The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.”

“She looked at him, watched the lights from the stage flicker over his expression, in the dark depths of his eyes. There was a whole other world in there, she thought and it was hers to explore forever if she would stop being so afraid.”

“The big television crouched in the shadowy beam of the porch light. Mattie could see its black, open face, and she felt as though she were looking into the mouth of a deep, dangerous cave.”