This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.

More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.