The Stone Diaries

p. 76

Eleven-year-old Daisy Goodwill, sick in bed: “Lying in bed, she apprehended life going on around her–which only worsened her sense of mourning. She could hear dogs barking in the neighborhood, and birdsong welling up, and the sound of the milkman going his rounds on Simcoe Street, his horse making a whinnying sound at the corner and stamping his heavy feet and dropping down his water and turds. Doors opened and closed, letters arrived, people came and went in the house, voices murmuring, the kettle coming to a boil, the hall clock ticking on and on. In the solipsistic way of children, the girl was amazed that all this should continue without her.”