“[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.”

“I could almost feel hope latching onto my heart and pulling it upward.”

“The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended.”

“In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.”

“No longer could I root happily into my mother's company and find comfort in her rounded shape. There was no one to tell me the facts. How much nutrition to pull from the dirt? Would the beetles bring harm? And what of the worms? Friends, foe, or nevermind?”

“She loved the beauty and the grace of the good old days, but not the rules that kept kids from talking and women from lifting heavy objects if they wanted to. Raleia was beginning to think it would be better to invent a whole new time period where she could pull things from then and now to make the perfect place.”