“Winning her would be like coaxing a butterfly to land on his hand. Patience, gentleness, and perhaps a prayer or two would be required.”

“In her dreams the Hawk would be waiting for her by the sea's edge; her kilt-clad, magnificent Scottish laird. He would smile and his eyes would crinkle, then turn dark withsmoldering passion.She would take his hand and lay it gently on her swelling abdomen, and his face would blaze with happiness andpride. Then he would take her gently, there on the cliff's edge, in tempo with the pounding of the ocean. He wouldmake fierce and possessive love to her and she would hold on to him as tightly as she could. But before dawn, he would melt right through her fingers. And she would wake up, her cheeks wet with tears and her hands clutching nothing but a bit of quilt or pillow.”

“If you were to live your life like a prayer, every action a sort of prayer, it would be easy to believe that all your thoughts were the words of God. Perhaps they would be.”

“They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.”

“Patience and wisdom walk hand in hand, like two one-armed lovers.”

“I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.”