“That minute, that tiny second when you hit the water flat on, you lose your breath. All the air flattens out of you - like going flat out on concrete. Then the next second you're sliding through, sliding and sinking slowly to the bottom of the pool. You touch the bottom, you bounce once there gently like an astronaut. And you feel the bottom of the pool against the soles of your feet and that's queer-but not queer, because you're the same person, aren't you? Just in another place that's all, you've still got the same body there. You look around, in that blue time, in that deep place. You look around with the same eyes, at the milky chlorine blue, and you have so much time there. Deep in the water with your same body, but everything's different, everything's better.”

“Sometime on a bright blue day When everything is very clear And there are no wrinkles in the sky It's good to go to a quiet place And lie down on your back and look at the world Or put your face deep in the grass And your arms around the ground And remember how it was when you were little And remember you're still the same you Only you got bigger on the outside is all that happened.”

“You know when you're floating on your back in the lake, the water rises and falls against your ears? So that for half a second you can hear everything around you and then for the other half a second everything's muted? It almost feels like your suspended between two worlds.”

“This kind of mixing of ingredients happens all the time at fast-food places... You know when you order french fries and there's a rogue onion ring at the bottom. You know, at first you're alarmed but you eat it. It all comes from the same place! You just have to go for it.”

“When you love someone that much and that person is away from you, sometimes it literally feels like you can't breathe, as if your body is aching for air. And then that person walks into the room, and all that ache inside of you, all that longing, dissolves and you feel yourself breathe again. But it's as if he takes the same breath with you. You're both one.”

“Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you'll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.That is what happened when Denna smiled at me.”