“She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.”

“She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes.”

“[Rose, taken out for the evening by Pinkie] She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present – she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”

“she is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. she sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her?”

“The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.”

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

“Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.”

“The appearance of [Virtue] was far different: her hair, seeking no borrowed charm from ordered locks, grew freely above her forehead; her eyes were steady; in face and gait she was more like a man; she showed a cheerful modesty; and her tall stature was set off by the snow-white robe she wore.”
[Virtutis] dispar habitus: frons hirta nec umquam composita mutata coma, stans vultus, et ore incessuque viro propior laetique pudoris celsa umeros niveae fulgebat stamine pallae.

“She sank again into the salty water…into the delicious warm brine-tasting depths of her grief.”