“It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.”

“olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for its nest.”

“She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing “yes” in the sky.”

“Maggie threw her head back and laughed. 'So you're going to try...what? Birds of a Feather?' she quested.'Of course not,' Kat said. 'Everyone knows the French government banned the importation of peacocks in 1987.”

“In old age her voice had become thin as a bird's, but her reading was still beautiful to him.”

“I asked my schoolmate Mary to write a letter to me. She was funny and full of life. She liked to run around her empty house without any clothes on, even once she was too old for that. Nothing embarrassed her. I admired that so much, because everything embarrassed me, and that hurt me. She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?”