“She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else”

“She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.”

“She got tired of herself. She got tired of not being able to say what she wanted or do what she wanted or even want what she wanted.”

“she knew what she wanted and it wasn't / me. / I know more women like that than any / other kind.”

“Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.”

“And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.”

“She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.”

“It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.”

“She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.”

“The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded”