“Sometimes she thought the only things she had faith in were revenge and Julian.”

“She said she thought there were different ways of loving someone, and there were some she used to think were the most important, and now she had changed her mind.”

“It was not often that she was alone like this and she did not like it. When she was alone she had to think and, these days, thoughts were not so pleasant.”

“She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe.”

“She had opened a door… and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge… Pain had made a sadist of her.”

“She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important.”

“Probably she should not have gotten away with it for as long as she had…but sometime, he had often thought, the retribution will come: reality denied comes back to haunt.”

“Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.”

“She was glad she didn’t know where it would take her. Because sometimes the only thing that
got you through hell was that you were in too deep to pull out.

[Ehlena]”

“She envied Camille. Camille was a tramp, Mildred thought. And things were so much easier for a tramp. There was no conscience, no sense of loss, nothing but a wonderful, relaxed, stretching-cat selfishness. She could go to bed with anyone she wanted to and never see him again and have no feeling of loss or insecurity about it. That was the way Mildred thought it was with Camille. She wished she could be that way, and she knew she couldn't. Couldn't because of her mother. And the unbidden thought entered her mind—if her mother were only dead Mildred's life would be so much simpler. She could have a secret little place to live somewhere. Almost fiercely, she brushed the thought away. "What a foul thing to think," she said to herself ceremoniously. But it was a dream she often had.”