“Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.”

“Cass gained a lot of strength from her public. Once she was a star, she wasn't afraid of anybody, and certainly not me.”

“she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face.”

“…burdened with the unbearable weight of ourselves.”

“She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.”

“But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person and this had been perfect.”

“Still, it would have been great, just once, to have a man stare at her with total adoration. To have him be… enthralled. Yes, that was the word. She would have loved for a man to be enthralled by her.”

“It was not possible for her to rejoin the unthinking world, becoming as she had been before, sleepily and smugly ignorant of consequences. There were thoughts that once thought, could not be unthought.”

“She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.”

“Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.”