“Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.”

“She felt drawing further from her and further from her an Archduke,(she did not mind that)a fortune,(she did not mind that)the safety and circumstance of married life,(she did not mind that)but life she heard going from her, and a lover.”

“She goes where she pleases. She appears unhoped for, uncalled for. She moves through doors and walls and windows. Her thoughts move through minds. She enters dreams. She vanishes and is still there. She knows the future and sees through flesh. She is not afraid of anything.”

“Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.”

“An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.”

“Her mind still worked, her feet still moved, she could walk, though only with the help of a walker, but walk she did, and she was a human being who knew for certainty that beans are best in salad and that old age is a terrible calamity.”