“The wind cut like a knife up here, and shrilled in the night like a mother mourning her slain children.”

“That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.”

“[Children] just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them, as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives.”

“The cold cut like a many bladed knife”

“Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth.”

“She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.”