“{His child} says she doesn't have the right pencils for the colors she sees.” ImaginationMagicChildhoodColor Book:The Long Dry Source: The Long Dry
“The two boys had come along and found the rabbit dying by the bank. The breeze was up a little and it was nice because it had been dry for so long, and still, and the rabbit was wet and matted like a cloth, like a dog when it gets wet. At first they thought it was dead. It had the shapelessness of meat.” DeathNatureDyingBrotherhoodBrothersRites Of Passage Book:The Long Dry Source: The Long Dry
“Now the pain is not there, she wonders briefly, lucidly, whether it was real. It's hard to recall pain when we are not in it. We remember it vaguely, descriptively, by making it live almost, like a creature, giving it some deliberating quality. They seem to have two ways of bringing her down, these headaches: the sharp point of today, which makes it as if she can only know the world through it, like looking out of a pin-hole; and a weight. A weight that is heavy like mud: that first brief and dull feel when you hit your head, but staying that way, not developing, just numb, heavy, until it seems to break off like a beach cliff and slide down one side of her body of her body in a slow avalanche of pain. Then they just seem to go.” PainHeadaches Book:The Long Dry Source: The Long Dry
“Over the hills behind the farm the light started. Just a thinning of the very black night that made the stars twinkle more, vibrate like a bird's throat, and put out a light loud compared to their tininess.” NightStarsNatureDawnCrepuscular Book:The Long Dry Source: The Long Dry
“And then he draws the lamb in one smooth strong stroke, and slaps and rakes its wet mosslike fur to make it breathe, feels the power of its fast heartbeat in the chicken-bone cage of its ribs, still wet in his hands from the grease of birth, all these things of life, from jissom to mucus slavered between thighs to the wet sack of birth and glistening oiled newborn thing—all of these things of life awatered.” BirthAnimalsNew LifeMiracle Of Birth Book:The Dig Source: The Dig
“There was more to what she said than beautifully bad grammar. It belied her logic. Since she was very tiny she'd always thought the best thing to do with any pain or worry was to go to bed. Because the thing that hurt you had to go to sleep as well. Then all you had to do was wake up very quietly, so you didn't wake the bad thing up. Then you got out of bed and left it sleeping, so it didn't hurt you anymore.” HurtWorryRestorative Sleep Book:The Long Dry Source: The Long Dry