“It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

“O Lord, Sula,” she cried, “girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.”It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

“the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry -- loud and long -- but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

“The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.”

“There had to be a circle of Hell where you were eternally fourteen, eternally in junior high. One of the lower circles.”

“Once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle.”