“Like water, I have no skin...only surface tension. (Gretel Ehrlich)”

“Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred percent.”

“He stopped at every village, every hamlet, every house and hovel he passed along the way to ask if they had seen or heard anything of his sister,, Gretel. But no one had. "You mean Gretel, the old woman?""No, my sister.""Gretel, my sister's baby?""No, my sister. And she's not a baby.""I have a goat named Gretel.""No!”

“The waters of her emotions ran deep, and he was only privy to the splashes on the surface.”

“The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.”

“Because I know it in my bones. You are the only female I desire, the only water that will quench my thirst, the only sun that will warm my skin, the only lips that were made for mine.”