“Death is a butterfly in it's cocoon waiting to fly . . . ”

“Philomena spun a tale about a butterfly that turned back into a caterpillar—saying that the butterfly would rather live in the cocoon for years than fly under the sun for only a few short days.“Butterflies don’t last,” said Philomena solemnly.”

“For a new year to bring you something new, make a move, like a butterfly tearing its cocoon! Make a move!”

“As a child, he'd found a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. He'd tried to help it by prying open the husk to set the insect free. It had lain in the sun, beating its wings as they dried, but had never flown and soon died. His grandmother explained the butterfly needed to go through the difficulty of freeing itself in order to have the strength to fly.”

“Time can do all sorts of things. It’s almost like a magician. It can turn autumn into spring and babies into children, seeds into flowers and tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into cocoons, and cocoons into butterflies. And life into death. There’s nothing that time can’t do. Except run backwards. That’s its trouble really, it can only go one way.”

“I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.”