“on the morning of many a first spring day...the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead. There needs no stronger proof of immortality.”

“This morning I wake to the blue-white light of an approaching spring in New York: the kind of light that promises it will not be this cold forever.”

“And when I wake, the room is white with the morning sun. The light is so bright it hurts my eyes. But I don't dare close them. I won't. Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning, and there is so much to see.”

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”

“I personally believe breathatarianism to be the highest mode of human living [...] breathing in pure air, absorbing the direct light and energies of the sun, bathing in pure water [...] I look at the obituaries every morning and ain't nobody listed but you eaters.”

“So many of these poor dead people spent their whole lives placing their faith in God, thinking that there’ll be this bright shiny light when they die. But after their last breath, the moment the shiny light is supposed to be there, it isn’t. But they’re dead, and they don’t know that the light isn’t there.”