“I once ran across a list of nearly 400 winds from around the world and wondered why Wyoming, so dominated by wind, has so few names for its variations. . . . There's the wind, the damned wind, and the goddamned wind.”

“When everyone you loved in your life is gone, you have days when the wind comes into your house like a person. You get so alone the wind sits down at your table and tries to have itself a cup of coffee, but it can't, there's no time, it has to move on, it's the wind. I'm not saying the wind is a ghost, only that the feeling is of the wind, the whole notion of the wind, is different when all people you ever loved are gone. It's not fresh air blowing through your hair and airing out your sheets and kitchen. No, sir. It's company. The wind is company that has to go”

“A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.”

“So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.”

“A sailor may choose the wind to ride out of seaport, but the wind has a mind of it's own.”

“A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you're abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose.”