“They had lived and known glory, and then they were ddead. She was alive and they were not, and nothing but a heartbeat separated her from them”

“Sometimes, when she's out here alone, she can feel the pulse of something bigger, as if all things animate were beating in unison, a glory and a connection that sweeps her out of herself, out of her consciousness, so that nothing has a name, not in Latin, not in English, not in any known language.”

“When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death-- not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing.”

“There were days - she could remember this - when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure.”

“I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. ”

“Her two worlds, two lives that she tried so hard to keep separate, were crashing together. And she felt helpless to stop it.”