“Wow." Lisa motioned for Keith to stop for a moment. "Look at this place. It's like the perfect family house. The porch and the windows, even from here, it feels like the walls have seen a lifetime of love.”

“In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well.”

“The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.”

“Stop looking at me like that."Sorry, I just wanted to savor the moment," Mom replied.What moment?" I asked.You're in first place," she said, and then began washing the windows.”

“Its roots emerged forcefully from the earth like the Great Wall and extended at least ten feet toward the house, demanding to be seen from beneath the soil.”

“Oh, why does compassion weaken us?'It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.”