There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.

Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.

But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language.

Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born. Here I am no longer my own secret. Will you let me stay?

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.

...that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.

Shall I add a man to my collection?