All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)

Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet.