“Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless grass below into hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the chapel, just blown out but still glowing. If one could drown in the grass...it might be the best way to die.”

“If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, that might be the best way to die.”

“Okay let's get this over with, no I'm not seasick, yes I've always been green, No I didn't eat grass as a child.”

“They did the best they could. Besides I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this." She twined her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.”

“One doesn't know, necessarily, when one meets the trip-action person in one's life. A good teacher, a flirt behind the dry-goods counter, a petty thief wielding a knife. Any one of a thousand chance encounters might be the chance of a lifetime. Or a deathtime.”

“For one short wet month early in the next year the drought lifted. Spring tipped in like green well water frothing at the hedges bubbling at the roadside splashing from the cottage roof in garlands of ivy and stringflower ”

“I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out.”