“Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.”

“In white, everything was vividly stark, like those line drawings in which everyone's black hair seems to literally to grow from the paper.”

“In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaringshape-outlines we have to blink against.”

“Nothing was perfect, but everything was all right. The light was never just blue.”

“Universe consists of frozen light.”

“That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.”