“She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.”

“She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.”

“She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband’s mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vaporlike through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that unappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him.”

“She feels lonely all the time, she wants to be accepted, by anyone, on any terms, but she feels apart. As if nobody who really got to know her would trust her.”

“She knew she shouldn't feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.”

“He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words took form on the white page, she got to watch him… and realized she never wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.”

“Most of all she loved that when she hugged him her head would rest neatly just below his chin, where she could feel his breath lightly blowing her hair and tickling her head.”

“She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.”

“A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.”

“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?”