She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.

At midnight the wind in the tress can sound like the ocean. The moonlight can make a road appear as endless as the sea.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.