“It was like Nils had said, about the little lake on the mountain that had been turned into marsh and the large one that had remained a lake. A being was either strong enough to hold their ground or...”

“Sometimes when you had a thought, it refused to leave. You rejected it, disowned it, sent it away, to find, moments later, that you were still spending time with it. It might have a different shape...”

“The circular wind is life. What was yesterday comes again tomorrow. It runs from place to place and returns. But in the midst of disorder is reason. And if you can hold to reason, you shall be safe.”

“Wolf Winter,’ she said, her voice small. ‘I wanted to ask about it. You know, what it is.’He was silent for a long time. ‘It's the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal,’ he said. ‘Morta...”

“But what was there to say?Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely t...”

“Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.”

“Just for future reference, don't use words like "love" anymore. It's a very sensitive word and it wears out quickly. Romeo barely says it, but John Hinckley filled up a whole journal with it. To pu...”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”