“Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.”

“I had to do something," she said. "I couldn't just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer.”

“He had a feeling that somewhere in the course of her life something had happened to her, something terrible which in the end had given her a great understanding and clarity of mind. He knew, too, almost at once, on the day she had driven up to the door of the cottage, that she had made a discovery about life which he himself had made long since... that there is nothing of such force as the power of a person content merely to be himself, nothing so invincible as the power of simple honesty, nothing so successful as the life of one who runs alone. Somewhere she had learned all this. She was like a woman to whom nothing could ever again happen.”

“Her father sagged as relief spread through him. “I thought
something awful was happening.”
She frowned. “Something awful was happening. It could have
got stuck in my hair.”

“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”

“Life Plan:
I asked her what she planned to do with her life & she said she was way beyond that point already. I'm just happy I remember to be there when it happens, she said.”

“In her businesslike way she thought that her life had begun when she was a very young woman and she really did look lovely: you knew it wouldn't last and you packed all you could into it — but men were different. A man like B — like Alfie, too — never got beyond the time when they were boys and, damn them, it kept them young.”

“He knew he should be furious, but he couldn’t sustain a decent rage around her. She had too much about her of the ferocious kitten. Something small and fuzzy, just learning it had claws and how to use them”

“She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?”

“As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her.”