“It began with the Christmas tree lights. They were candy-bright, mouth-size. She wanted to feel the lightness of them on her tongue, the spark on her tastebuds. Without him life was so dark, and al...”

“Once upon a time there was an empress, trapped as a ghost in the ruins of a jewelled palace, cursed to find another soul to take her place. At least, that's what the empress heard. But, as it turne...”

“I met Baba Yaga at the end of childhood past pigtails and fairytales, but not quite ready to give up on make-believe.”

“Daniel first kisses his brother in a town where no-one knows them, a no-account place that's barely even a town, just some buildings clustered around the highway: a smoky bar, an empty motel, a con...”

“She used to be all right, Una, when we were kids. I liked that she wasn't fussed about her antlers.”

“Walking out of the office, her nervous fingers made an ear out of the tissue in her pocket luckily the thin sheets wouldn't hold the shape, and unfurled as she threw it on the pavement. On the jou...”

“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”

“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”

“So its true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”

“At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hea...”

“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above t...”

“When Rachel Carson accepted the National Book Award, she said, 'if there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there but because no one could write truthfully a...”

“It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.”

“You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sin, you know, and cry tears doing it that are genuine as any.”

“If I could undo everything," Tony said, "I would never have gone to that party. I was an idiot, Kelly, and it cost me the love of my life.”