“... I'll tell her about Tia. I'll tell her how beautiful she was and how brave. And I'll tell her the most important thing of all: that her mother loved her better than her life.”

“I couldn't tell what colour her eyes were. They were wet and dark and shining, like pools of deep, still water. For a second I thought I could see pictures in them, like I was looking right inside her to where her memories were. She smiled, and I wondered if she knew what I'd seen or if she could see the pictures I kept hidden inside myself.”

“I looked at her moonskin face her pansy eyes and her cobweb hair and I knew I would go on giving her one last chance for ever.”

“... and all we knew about her that we didn't know the night before was that she had eyes like pansies and skin like the moon.”

“Maybe if the empty space inside her was filled with love there'd be no room for sad and dark things.”

“I saw pearls in her mouth and the velvet cushion of her tongue and I heard the magic words come out of her.”

“... we sat back and let the moon shine itself all over her, and we saw that Tia was full of light. Billy said that when we die the darkness leaves us.'We're pure and perfect then,' he said, 'the way we are when we're born.”