“Either things grow and change or they die.”

“She had read about people-where? she could not remember this either- who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to not be yet of the earth, suspeded still between two worlds.”

“She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.”

“All day she had been dreaming of the comet, its wild and fiery beauty, what it might mean, how her life might change.”

“But she had felt since childhod that her life would n ot be ordinary. A moment would come- she would know it when she saw it- and everything would change.”

“A moment might be a thousand different things.”

“It's funny how things seem different, suddenly.”