Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.