Wings

I told her we were going to get married, and all she could talk about was frogs. She said there's these hills where it's hot and rains all the time, and in the rainforests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees there are these like great big flowers called . . . bromeliads, I think, and water gets into the flowers and makes little pools and there's a type of frog that lays eggs in the pools and tadpoles hatch and grow into new frogs and these little frogs live their whole lives in the flowers right at the top of the trees and don't even know about the ground, and once you know the world is full of things like that, your life is never the same.

Is it dead?' said Gurder. 'It can't die! It's existed for thousands of years!' Gurder shook his head. 'Sounds like a good reason for dying,' he said.

For some reason, humans needed things that weren't true.

What these sounds mean, he thought, is: I am alive and so are you. And we're all very worried that we might not be alive for much longer, so we'll just keep talking, because that's better than thinking.

I think,” said Masklin, “that maybe they’re intelligent enough to be lonely.

The sweater was much easier to climb.