“The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.”

“Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream”

“As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.”

“The human heart is greedy; it will use religion, color, or any other excuse to justify its greed. Blame the human heart.”

“...if he sees his fellow humans as anything more than complicated animals. Not so different from a deer or a wolf, knitted together with the same sinew but in another design.”

“And her voice is a string of colored beads,Or steps leading into the sea.”