“There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling...”

“But life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.”

“And a moment that ought to have lasted for everHas come and gone before I knew.”

“Tears flow and smiles fade to the same rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.”

“Each form is inadequate, like a graft to be rejected by its intractable and unrelenting host and thus can only serve a brief and momentary purpose coherent to a context rooted in contiguous reason....”

“We continue to eat, the conversation easy and flowing. I listen to everything everyone says, an urgency to pay attention, to not miss these moments you don't know are moments until they're gone. I ...”

“Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,just once. And never again. But to have beenthis once, completely, even if only once:to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

“I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me...”

“Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that.”