Times like this, with the wind moving the grass and curling around her like a huge cool hand, Tess felt the world as a second presence, as another person, as if the wind and the grass had voices of their own and she could hear them talking.

And death? I don't fear death. I dread the absence of it.

It was possible at last to hear the silence to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light.

We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father's unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.

I loved Molly. Or at least I told myself I did. Or, if what I felt for her was not love, it was at least a plausible imitation, a convincing substitute.

An honest book is almost as good as a friend.

One doesn't have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand.