“She sent him scented letters,
And he received them with a strange delight.
Just like his wife
But how she was before the tears,
And how she was before the years flew by,
And how she was when she was beautiful.”

““Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightaway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, 'No tears!' before they both fell into profound sleep.
How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his…”

“You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?”

“"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…"”

“The sweatshirt was big on her and she looked ridiculous. He liked it. And he liked that she was wearing something that carried his scent.”

“…tomorrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. Almost twenty-five and nothing to show for it.”

“Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.”

“How could she know what she wanted to do with her life? All these years she thought she'd be a healer like Mama, and now she knew it was never going to happen.”

“Just leave her alone. You're annoying her.'
'I'm not annoying her. She doesn't even know how to be annoyed. She's, what, a week old?'
'She's three months.'
'She's three months in our years, but what is she in baby years?”

“She would wonder what had hurt her when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.”