"I had come alive here...this was my home, and though one day it would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted exactly to me. A place I knew by heart. The one place in the world I'd been made for."

"Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight."

"We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone."

"Denys had a way of seeing everything as if he knew it would never be there exactly the same again. He understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistence or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend."