“Unwillingly Miranda wakes,Feels the sun with terror,One unwilling step she takes,Shuddering to the mirror.Miranda in Miranda's sightIs old and gray and dirty;Twenty-nine she was last night;This morning she is thirty.Shining like the morning star,Like the twilight shining,Haunted by a calendar,Miranda is a-pining.Silly girl, silver girl,Draw the mirror toward you;Time who makes the years to whirlAdorned as he adored you.Time is timelessness for you;Calendars for the human;What's a year, or thirty, toLoveliness made woman?Oh, Night will not see thirty again,Yet soft her wing, Miranda;Pick up your glass and tell me, then--How old is Spring, Miranda?”

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.”

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,Something is about to burst.The clock is crouching, dark and small,Like a time bomb in the hall.Hark, it's midnight, children dear.Duck! Here comes another year!”

“Lucas: Are you afraid of dogs, Miranda?Miranda: Dogs, no. Ponies with fangs take some gettin used to.”

“Hark to the sky of a seagull!He cries because he's not an eagle.Oh, what if you were you silly he-gull?What would you say to your she-gull?”

“Say something, Amy," Miranda insists. "Something positive. I'm sure it'll make you feel better.""Okay, Miranda. I've got it." I motion the girls to lean in close to hear my words. "At least I'm not dead."How's that for positivity?I have to admit it does make me feel better.”

“Miranda looked up at him through a haze of desire, her will consumed by a fierce crackling heat, just like the dry twigs of the old woman's fire.”