“I appricated that Nell was talking to me like a grown-up, but I had no idea what she meant. Still, I could see that the words flowed together like water over a riverbed.”

“Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.”

“I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace a tree possesses. To be like that-to just be-that's the most noble thing of all.”

“Now I had seen the grief of the two strongest people I knew. And somehow, Daddy's and Edie's crying made them seem even stronger to me. It was better to cry than to suck it up and go around conjuring hate in your heart”

“In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.”

“Maybe all the secrets of life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information no one else had.”

“Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.”