He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.

There was a good deal to be said, Hilary decided, for middle age and infirmity. The years in which one demanded much of life were left behind, together with the bitterness of not getting what one wanted. One's values, too, were altered. Gifts that once one took for granted, sunshine and birdsong, freedom from pain, sleep and one's daily bread, seemed now so extraordinarily precious.

What is the scent of water?" "Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.

There's much that goes to the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, an' the folks life knocks us up against, an' -- not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get.

Our home, our special country, is for all of us the place where we find liberation; a very difficult word ... that tries to describe something that can't be described but is the only thing worth having.