If only she were a little bigger, Grandmother thought. Preferably a good deal bigger, so I could tell her that I understand how awful it is. Here you come, headlong into a tight little group of people who have always lived together, who have the habit of moving around each other on land they know and own and understand, and every threat to what they’re used to only makes them still more compact and self-assured. - P33
An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon. - P33
Then she closed and latched the door and lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up over her head. The southwest wind whispered peacefully, distantly in from the sea and enveloped the island’s inner core – the guest room and the woodyard. - P34
She’s probably one of those people who do one good thing and then that’s the end of it." - P36
SOPHIA ASKED HER GRANDMOTHER what Heaven looked like, and Grandmother said it might be like the pasture they were just then walking by, on their way to the village over on the mainland. They stopped to look. It was very hot, the road was white and cracked, and all the plants along the ditch had dust on their leaves. They walked into the pasture and sat down in the grass, which was tall and not a bit dusty. It was full of bluebells and cat’s-foot and buttercups. - P37
If you turned it off – which was easy to do – and listened only to the insects, you could hear thousands of millions of them, and they filled the whole world with rising and falling waves of ecstasy and summer. - P37
You can see for yourself that life is hard enough without being punished for it afterwards. We get comfort when we die, that’s the whole idea." - P38
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