They stood inside their own quiet like a pocket. - Louise Erdrich

Can you stop your mother from singing to you? Who would do such a thing?

How the flowers were fired and colored into the design. Perhaps this sort of gesture will be lost, perhaps it is a function of consciousness that we don’t need in order to survive. Perhaps this piece of evolution makes no sense — our hunger for everyday sorts of visual pleasure — but I don’t think so. I think we have survived because we love beauty and because we find each other beautiful. I think it may be our strongest quality.

It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering.