“... and with my last thought I felt some real sympathy for those poor chickens.”

“In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional...What a special case I was.”

“How intimately I experience in my heart just what he must have felt in all of those unknown rooms, some of them poor, perhaps, and some splendid, but all opposing him with the cold fearful indifference of other people’s belongings, against which he has to defend himself as best he can with his poor lonely trunk and his case of books.”

“Later when I thought of the chickens, one of those rare pale blue eggs rose up into my throat. The chickens had been part of our family, and the egg in my throat was the feeling of something missing. It was hard and smooth and heavy, but also so fragile it might break and make me cry. It was the feeling of growing out of a favorite shirt, milk spilled on the floor, the last bit of honey in the jar, falling apple blossoms. It was the lump in the throat behind everything beautiful in life.”

“[...] And those women with the camera looked loose."Excellent, Phin thought. At last, some good news.”

“I need some kind of... like... last minute, poorly-set-up deus ex machina!!”