“I’d rather be happy and odd than miserable and ordinary,' she said, sticking her chin in the air.”

“They also said she was unconscious and that Valentine wasn’t happy about it. He seems to be waiting for her to wake up.”
“I’d stay unconscious if I were her,” Isabelle muttered.”

“Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.”

“Daisy was a consciously happy young woman without any of the usual endowments that make for conscious happiness, money apart. She was not pretty, she was not clever, she had no friends, no talents, nor even an imagination to make her think she was happy when she was really miserable. As she was never miserable, she had no need of an imagination.”

“Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.”

“The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding, the chin in doubt, and the chin at bay.”

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

“And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.”

“What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.”

“She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”