“I wonder what a soul…a person's soul…would look like,' said Priscilla dreamily.'Like that, I should think,' answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. 'Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers…and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea…and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”

“I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,' said Priscilla.'Then your soul is a golden narcissus,' said Anne, 'and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet.''And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,' finished Priscilla.”

“...sifting through our thoughts like children going through colored stones -- optimistic, because although some were too dark and some were too sharp, many glittered like precious gems.”

“I think that maybe, if human beings have souls, that maybe their souls are in their eyes. That maybe that’s what the color is. Their souls.""Well, they say the eyes are the windows to the soul.""No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, the actual color is kind of like your spirit, like your soul. And the black space, maybe the black space is the tunnel that people talk about when they die. Do you know what I mean? Like when you die, you go into the eyes of the person you’re looking at and walk through their eyes and, at the other end, that’s where heaven is.”

“You don’t have a soul, so you can’t be baptized. All animals are like that. I think it’s unfair and sometimes I don’t believe it. After all, what would heaven be without birds or dogs or horses? And what about trees and flowers? They don’t have souls either. Does that mean heaven looks like a cement parking lot? I suppose this is what the nuns call a theological problem.”

“It was an amazing garden like nothing Will had ever seen. Everything was covered in snow and glittering ice, the winding paths, the clusters of trees and what looked like mazes. And here and there blue fountains splashed and a river meandered between them, though the water didn’t look like water at all but like a stream of sapphires. And strangest of all was how see-through everything looked, trees showing through trees, the river showing through heaps of snow. It was all like a daydream, half imagination, half reality. But Will knew that it was real.”