“Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.”

“About Grandma Lynn: She was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. At seventy, she had come to believe in time alone.”

“Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "make me pretty.”

“She looked at David closely, and the feeling was still there. She could see that his forehead was too high, that a small scar cut a white stroke through his eyebrow. And his smile was pretty crooked, really. But it was as if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her.”

“It doesn't matter where you are in the world because it's about where you are up here,' she touched the side of her head lightly. 'It's about the other world I inhabit. The world of dreams, hope, imagination and memories. I'm happy up here,' she tapped her temple again and smiled, 'and because of that I'm happy up here too.' She held out her arms and displayed the countryside around her....”

“...but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.”