“Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this--dog days--that boats ...”

“Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea...”

“She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People ...”

“Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. O...”

“Small animals are a great problem. I wish God had never created small animals, or else that He had made them so they could talk, or else that He'd given them better faces. Space. Take moths. They f...”

“And all you can do is just read," she said. She raised her voice an screamed, "You just read and read and read!" Then she threw herself down on the table and wept.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”

“The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devicesafter a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.”

“The cold rationalism simply covers for raw, wounded emotion. The more driven people are by the mind, the more they feel and further encode their feelings. The thickness of the tarpaulin cover is as...”

“Anything we fully do is an alone journey.”