“For the life of her, she couldn't understand how such an obstinate, boneheaded chauvinist could make her pulse race and her insides turn to jelly.”

“Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.”

“She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.”

“Her forte was not necessarily the audibility of her music, for she had a defective area where her voice cracked at a high-pitch, with a limited one-octave range, but she turned it into her virtue for she knew how to mould her voice.”

“How do you make a girl know she's beautiful? What is the system for that, what do you show her, how do you give her a new set of eyes and turn her face back to the mirror?”

“She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.”

“The woman said something to Roman. He stopped, turned to her, and shook his staff.
She crossed her arms. I couldn't see her face, but I read the body language well enough.”

“He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know.”

“Nature wronged her in making her a woman. But for her sex she could have surpassed all the heros of history.”

“She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predicament of her life we would never understand.”