“Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.”

“She thought of something her mother had told her when she'd finally broken up with one of her most dysfunctional boyfriends.”

“At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths, first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.”

“Mom?" Mother turned to Grandmother.
"What?"
"She's going to lunch with her kidnapper!"
"Take a picture for me," Grandma said.”

“Why, when I have won her, do I continue to woo her? Because, though she belongs to me, she is not and never will be mine.”

“Take pride in your pain," her mother had always told her. "You are stronger than those who have none.”

“We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.”

“The promise had not failed her.... She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear.... "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."”

“Oooh noo, please, it's wicked to mock the afflicted! Well it might be one of your own! Don't laugh at her, she might want paying - I told her this was an audition! She's known to me as Madam Vera Roper, but she's known to everyone else as The English Open!”

“The boy is special, Aunt Annie told his mother, and his mother in turn told him. But what kind of special? No one ever says.”