“His quiet certainty made the ground beneath my feet feel solid. Like someday everything might actually be okay.”

“...because on some basic, soul-deep level within me, he is the solid ground beneath my feet.”

“One time, as the cold wind blew and she kept watch over the playground, Aomame realized she believed in God. It was a sudden discovery, like finding, with the soles of your feet, solid ground beneath the mud.”

“It’s strange,” I say, rubbing my feet against his. “I feel like I should be sad, but I’m not. It’s not that I won’t miss you, but it just feels like-”“Like everything is going to be okay anyway,” he says, finishing my thought.”

“When your heart breaks, you can actually feel it, an agonizing stab of pain in a muscle that you know for a fact is just a glorified pump. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, the ordered universe changes, the solid ground beneath your feet becomes a slippery rock. The material world that seemed so safe and solid a moment ago becomes a shifting, ghostly place of shadows and mist. Matters that seemed settled and certain a long ago come suddenly unhinged, and you begin to doubt everything you ever knew to be true.”

“It feels like the ground is breathing and the air has hands, like everything is moving except me, like I am the only thing solid, like it is the rest of the world that is dizzy.”