“Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.
She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.”

“Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.”

“She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.”

“She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”

“She slid out from under his arm, and picked up his shirt from the floor. When she put it on, it failed to meet in the middle over her chest. that always worked in the movies, she thought, disgusted, and dropped it on the floor.”

“Why should he remember her? Why should she remember him? She had other things to think about. She was a grown woman. She had to face life. Even if all life had to show her was a locked door, and behind the locked door, no room.”

“That dichotomy between who she was and who she thought she should be was what really killed her.”

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.”

“She decided that her wisest course would be to put him out of her mind. After reaching this conclusion she lay thinking about him until at last she fell asleep.”

“Kindness was the last thing she needed. She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold.”