Bird Summons

'In every journey...there comes a point, around three quarters of the way through, when the traveller, without a guide, can go no further. But not everyone finds a guide. Not everyone accepts a guide. Not everyone is convinced. Many would rather keep fumbling on their own, trying and trying again. They would rather risk not completing the journey, they would rather risk getting lost or content themselves with the advance already made, than follow in trust.' (p259)

Every holiday had a perfect length and then it turned into an indulgence, time sitting heavy on idle hands, the mind free to find fault with life left behind, too much friction between people, familiarity turning to contempt. Every holiday was a threat. (p213)

A snake might not remember the year before, the month before. That desire to know, to check, to measure against, was human. (p233)

One mother could look after twelve children and decades later these twelve adults would fidget and struggle to look after that one mother.

[she] did not want the flickering images of the past to be part of the garden. War should stay out of here. Shaking windows, wailing women, burnt skin, the terrifying gleam in the whites of a young man’s eyes. Blood that was not menstrual, softness that was damaged flesh, stillness that was not sleep but death. She wished she could wash her mind of all these things. She breathed in the smell of the garden, touched the flowers. This was the present, and she was here inside it. (Page 68)