“Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”

“She lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she slap breathes in light.”

“I think unconsciously I was afraid that if she asked me how I felt, my unleashed grief and rage would kill us all. In some unadmitted corner of myself I was already weeping and screaming and begging her not to leave me, not to go. If I started crying for real, only her comfort could make me stop, and if she died before she had finished comforting me, then I would be left to cry forever.”

“I sat thinking. How it was she who'd mentioned love first. How she seemed to be waiting, the door still between us, for me to act. And I imagined that if I reached for her I would find her where she lay waiting in the water, and my fingers would glide over her bare wet skin until every inch of her, every crook and hollow, would become mine. I would vouch for her with my life.”

“No, I mean with us. Do you think we would have made it?"It took a moment for her to answer. "I don't know, Noah. I really don't, and you don't either. We're not the same people we were then.We've changed. Both of us."She paused. He didn't respond, and in the silence she looked towards the creek. She went on. "But yes, Noah, I think we would have. At least, I'd like to think we would have.”

“She worked diligently to develop her understanding of breath; for she knew that with breath she could create a world. She imagined herself breathing life into the glass and, with every week that passed, Sei came closer to realizing the loveliness of the objects that she could picture in her imagination.”