“Can there be anything more sad than a girl dying on the day of her first communion, in her new dress. A little bride of death...”

“No one was more stunned by the choice than her mother, who claimed to the saleswoman that she hadn't seen Danielle that dressed up since her first Communion.”

“A girl in a yellow dress on a sunny day with nothing inside her but darkness”

“All I can think is that I want her more than anything. I want her more than I've ever wanted anything, ever.”

“Instead I sounded like a little girl on her first day of kindergarten. My name is Bee, and I like coloring and horsies.”

“And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she's in the ocean. it's the dreaded second day, the day people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.”