Claire Holden Rothman

“In a single week I had lost the two most important men in my life. Yet the word “lost” was misleading. Neither had died and it had been years since either had played any outwardly discernible role in my life. Internally, however, they have been pivotal, at the centre of everything. Now that centre, my centre, had slipped.”

“I had achieved my dream, but what had it brought? Wealth? I glanced at my dress, worn too many days now without washing, and at the patched cloak bunched under my arm. Renown? I’d been a celebrity in my student days, but since then I might as well have died. Happiness? My eyes pricked with tears. The day I received my degree I thought my life would be completely altered. I had entered the forbidden land of my father. Nothing would ever be the same. But in truth nothing happened. I remained plain old Agnes White, no richer or more famous or happier than before.”

“It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.”

“Maybe a certain degree of deprivation was necessary to the experience of pleasure, just as suffering was an integral part of joy.”

“Bookishness, an unfortunate trait for a girl, especially one who is not nice to look at.”

“Happiness is a strange thing. It is something I tend to recognize only after it has passed, when I realize I miss it.”

“I looked briefly up from my notes. I was surrounded by hearts, sectioned and preserved. Hearts with holes. Hearts with leaking valves or thickened walls. Hearts with narrow or transposed aortas. I closed my eyes.”