“For example, the wind has its reasons. We just don't notice as we go about our lives. But then, at some point, we are made to notice. The wind envelops you with a certain purpose in mind, and it rocks you. The wind knows everything that's inside you. And not just the wind. Everything, including a stone. They all know us very well. From top to bottom. It only occurs to us at certain times. And all we can do is go with those things. As we take them in, we survive, and deepen.”

“Anger and fatigue well up all over the country. Fall has arrives, with its biting winds, its long rainy evenings. The gloom matches our overall mood. It mirrors the minds of the adults. And we children absorb everything, we drink everything in without anyone noticing, until the moment we get squeezed. We're baby sponges, you can't just wring us out, you have to be careful what you soak us in. Even washed, rinsed, dried a hundred times over, traces still remain in us.”

“...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.”

“Do you know what the wind tastes like? […] Mysterious spices […] that tell us about people and events far away. That we can’t see. But that we can sense if we draw the wind deep into our mouths and then eat it.”

“Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn to God when everything is going well for us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption.”

“Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.”