“She stood eating soup in her overgrown garden, looking up at stars she could not name.”

“She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the window-pane, looking up at the unattainable form of everything she loved. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

“Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.”Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?” “Heaven.”

“she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.”

“She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees.”

“If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that now she could eat dessert without eating her vegetables.”