“She cried so hard her tears formed a river, and tears of grief always run into the river Styx.”

“Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuee! Nuee! A lightdress fluttered. She was gone. And into the river that had been a stream . . . there fell a tear, a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears . . . for it was a leaptear. But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh! I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!”

“I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.”

“When I told her my love would stop her tears from falling, she started laughing. She laughed so hard she started crying. Damn. Double damn!”

“Faith would get her through when she had to face tomorrow, but her grief needed the tears to fall. There was healing in those tears.”

“He was weeping. Although 'weeping' really is to small a word for the activity the kind had undertaken. Tears were cascading from his eyes. A small puddle had formed at his feet. I am not exaggerating. The king, it seemed, was intent on crying himself a river.”