“Parker: She believed, absolutely, that each person, each heart, had a counterpart—had a mate. A rightness. She’d always believed it, and understood that unshakable belief was a reason she was good at what she did.”

“She did not really want to know; she believed she understood already.”

“What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here there, she survived. Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.”

“Apparently she believes she is safe. Evil is essentially stupid, Joe; despite her brilliance, she believes what she wishes to believe. Or it may be that she is willing to risk her own death against the tempting prize of absolute power.”

“Stephanie had no problem doing what she
was told, just so long as she was given a good reason why she
should.”

“But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone.”

“Deep in her heart, she wasn't sure she deserved to be happy, nor did she believe that she was worthy of someone who seemed… normal.”

“I don't think she doesn't believe she can die. I think, just like you always did, she believes there are things worth dying for.”

“She’d sort things out later. She’d explain things later. Right now she just had to make sure there would be a later.”

“She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.”