“And I know that God made the heart the most fragile and resilient of all organs, that a lifetime of joy and pain might be encased in one mortal chamber.”

“I have always contended that girls are the sturdier of the genders and wondered in secret if the One that Is might not best be identified with the creativity of the female heart.”

“Sometime before sleep it occurred to me that the true nature of being without might mean never knowing what one lacked.”

“How mighty, how great the One must be, I thought, to send the heavens careening, and yet hear the cry of a single heart.”

“I will protect you all the days of my life. You will be the mother of all who live and the giver of life to the seed spoken by the One -- the seed that will strike the offspring of the serpent. The One has said it, Isha...today I name you Havah, because you will live, and all who live will come from you, and you will give birth to hope.”

“I slept in the grip of that love, comforted, thinking I should forget my longing within it, knowing that all was somehow well...In the morning when I stirred, I knew...I knew I lay here in my own flesh, but not alone.”

“You are necessary to that end, and to me...you are all I have of the garden. You are the image of me and of the One. And if you have wronged, then I have surely repaid your wrong twice over.”