It's a funny thing about bogs. You can fill them with rocks and sand and old logs and make a little fenced-in yard on top with a woodpile and chopping block - but bogs go right on behaving like bogs. Early in the spring they breathe ice and make their own mist, in remembrance of the time when they had black water and their own sedge blossoming untouched.

He didn't remember, he didn't worry, he just was.

Why are you in such a rush?" Sophia asked, and her grandmother answered that it was a good idea to do things before you forgot that they had to be done.

It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.' 'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?' 'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.

There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.

...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.

Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.