“The Abandoned ValleyCan you understand being alone so longyou would go out in the middle of the nightand put a bucket into the wellso you could feel something down theretug at the other end of the rope?”

“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”

“There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but final. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and complementing our metaphysical condition... Dead doesn't change, and outdoors is here to stay.”

“You can blame it all on fate and the universe, but in the end you alone decide if you’re going to lie down and let hell take you under, or if you’re going to stand strong in defiance of it all with your middle finger raised.”

“And Meredith and Bonnie, who's going to bend some spoons for us next. I'm going to throw you down a rope… that is, unless Bonnie can levitate you out.”

“But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours—the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party.”