“Meg's face clouded, and I wondered if she was going to rain the way people do sometimes.”

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?" I do face facts," Meg said.They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”

“When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots. But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the creamatorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or snow somewhere.”

“I don’t look for faces in clouds, I look for clouds in faces. And the best place to look is at the face of my friend, Carl Cumulonimbus, who I nicknamed “Rain Factory,” because he’s always either in a dark and stormy mood, or crying heavily.”

“The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.”

“She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened. Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her. But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.”