I see some people stay in one place because it's convenient or it's comfortable. But they're missing out on their passion.

I've got big shoes to fill. This is my chance to do something. I have to seize the moment.

The mind is crazy thing. To be focused is the most difficult thing.

Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.

I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be.

She is not so afraid at night because she is the color of it.

Well, if a man don't HAVE a chance, then he has to TAKE a chance!

Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.

Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see. When I arrive here I believe it is the place he warns against. The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever. But the ice comes first, he says. And when I see knives of it hanging from the houses and trees and feel the white air burn my face I am certain the fire is coming.

So he had said always, so she would not have to be afraid of the change—the falling away of skin, the drip and slide of blood, and the exposure of bones underneath. He had said always to convince her, assure her, of permanency.

The doctor raised the gun and pointed it at what in his fear ought to have been flaring nostrils, foaming lips, and the red-rimmed eyes of a savage. Instead he saw the quiet, even serene, face of a man not to be fooled with.

In her way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.