“Mother earth cried so much that she has pool of tears more than the land of happiness.”

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”

“The land is so much more than its analysis.”

“But I've wept so much,' she said to Delay. 'Now I don't cry any more. When you don't cry it's because you no longer believe in happiness.”

“There is nothing which has a more abiding influence on the happiness of a family than the preservation of equable and cheerful temper and tones in the [mother].”

“There was a girl who used to hide behind the moon with her legs bent against it like tiny fishhooks, as if she were the only thing keeping all that grey from tilting on it’s orbit and grazing against the skin of the Earth. The stars left tiny burn marks on her skin that sizzled when she touched them so that she sounded like raindrops in summer when she walked. The stars fell on her back so often it wore away in the shape of a fin. She bathed in the white moonlight and it made her skin more pale so her eyes looked wider. Her eyes were so wide that she could take much more in as she watched earth like the clouds over it were stage curtains being drawn back. Ta-da-do-rah! And then at the end the people cried and their tears fell from the earth and into the craters making pools for her fishhook legs to catch their stories in. One letter at a time falling away into the velvet black backdrop curtain before she could hold them. And the people sighed, mouths all open wide, people always cry at endings.”