“Shino looked at me straight in the eye and smiled, her face brimming with a kind of inner strength. That strength seemed to gather the beads of perspiration that glistened on her brow, then sprang from her face and leapt across to my heart with a rhythm like ripples on water.”

“Whether it succeeded or not was of secondary importance; first, I had to do it. Then I would experience the fullness of life as I went along. That was my only possible way of living.”

“We'd lived our lives thinking that there was a special way of living for people who had been discarded.”

“and then he looked her full in the face, and her heart leapt and sank, as the eyes the dangerous blue of the summer sky before a storm gazed back into hers.”

“Looking at you has been my favorite pastime from the moment you asked me to describe your face," he said solemnly, looking straight into her eyes.”

“Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her.”

“Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.”