“You know how to check fer thin ice, boy?" he would ask me. "Wall, what you do is stick one foot way out ahead of you and stomp the ice real hard and listen fer it to make a crackin' sound. Thar now, did you hear how the ice cracked whan Ah stomped it? Thet means it's too thin to hold a man's weight. Now pull me up out of hyar and we'll run back to shore and see if we kin built a fahr b'fore Ah freezes to death!”

“Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you'll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.That is what happened when Denna smiled at me.”

“If I offer you a glass of water, and bring back a cup of ice, I’m trying to teach you patience. And also that sometimes you get ice with no water, and later you’ll get water with no ice. Ah, but that’s life, no?
”

“Before I know what he's up to, he grabs my hand. Hey! I try to pull it away but he holds it even tighter. Saba, he says, I dunno what happy star sent you lookin fer me but I'm mighty thankful it did. If you hadn't of turned up, I'd be dead by now.”

“I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

“Living in the modern age,death for virtue is the wage.So it seems in darker hours.Evil wins, kindness cowers.Ruled by violence and vicewe all stand upon thin ice.Are we brave or are we mice,here upon such thin, thin ice?Dare we linger, dare we skate?Dare we laugh or celebrate,knowing we may strain the ice?Preserve the ice at any price?”