“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

“She leaned into me, and when I closed my eyes, I knew I wanted nothing more than to hold her this way forever.”

“Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.”

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

“She stood and turned around and of course there was nothing there. But she could see him standing there, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, that easy, crooked grin on his pleasant-rather-than-handsome face, leaning lanky and at ease against a monument or one of the stone gateposts or maybe just a tree gone red with fall's dying fire.”

“The universe wasn’t just stranger than you knew, it was stranger than you could know.”

“An alternate career path for a woman lay in the Church, where as a nun she escaped the dangers of childbirth. In the convent she could hold any position except that of priest, and as an abbess or prioress she had great power and responsibility.”

“I can stand.”
“It looks to me like you‘re using a wall to prop you up. that’s not my definition of ‘standing.’”
“Its leaning,” Jace told him. “Leaning comes right before standing.”

“Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.”

“She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.”