“But you still need the two: the dark and the light. You can't see one without the other.”

“Lying in their field above the sea, watching the sun go down and the darkness creep over the field so that they were wrapped together in shadow. Will propped himself on one elbow beside her, is finger curling strands of her dark hair until it was bound so tight it pulled her scalp and she cried out, and then he bent over her, kissed her, so,so tenderly, and she thought she would die with happiness. They had made love, the very first time.”

“That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.”

“It's funny isn't it, how everything's changing all time. Nothing stays still.”

“We have to find our own way to live, and to love. Don't ever let anyone else tell you how it should be for you.”

“What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.”

“Some things get lost others return. That is how it is: the way of things.”