All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.

I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

they ran in the sunlight, creating their own breeze which pressed their dresses into their damp skin. Reaching a kind of square of four locked trees which promised cooling; they flung themselves into the shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the wildness that had come upon them so suddenly

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.

Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.