“The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.”

“She said if she couldn't play, she had nothing left. What about me?”

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

“Sophie left the den and wandered about in the large garden. She tried to forget what she had learned at school, especially in science classes.If she had grown up in this garden without knowing anything at all about nature, how would she feel about the spring?Would she try to invent some kind of explanation for why it suddenly started to rain one day? Would she work out some fantasy to explain where the snow went and why the sun rose in the morning?”

“She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.”

“And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.”