“She shows herself to the audience like the Host to the congregation.”

“I have been Europe's last hope. She proved incapable of refashioning herself by means of voluntary reform. She showed herself impervious to charm and persuasion. To take her I had to use violence.”

“Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself…. As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.”

“Let her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is so.”

“A Woman in harmony with her spirit
is like a river flowing.
She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination
prepared to be herself
and only herself”

“This is how she shows herself a woman indeed,
My lady, and I reproach her for it:
She does not want what one ought to want,
And what she is forbidden to do, she does.”

“This is a common case,
seriously,
It looks like a fight with him
But she's really fighting with herself.”

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

“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.”