But I knew one more thing. That people w ho denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger.

We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.

A cliché is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint.

The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins.

I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.