“Frederica also thought, for she had been there many times, that if this was a beginning, it was the beginning of an ending, that was the way it went.”

“There were times when [he] allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say, his conscious thinking life, in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man's thoughts, all his work another man's work. And then he thought it did not perhaps matter so greatly... It was a pleasant subordination, if he was a subordinate.”

“What is it my dear?"Ah, how can we bear it?"Bear what?"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."And every day we shall have less. And then none."Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

“He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.He thought about the death mask. He could and could not say that the mask and the man were dead. What had happened to him was that the ways in which it could be said had become more interesting than the idea that it could not.”

“Randolph Henry Ash: “What is it? My dear?”Christabel LaMotte: “Ah, how can we bear it?”Randolph Henry Ash: “Bear what?”Christabel LaMotte: “This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?”Randolph Henry Ash: “We can be quiet together, and pretend – since it is only the beginning – that we have all the time in the world.”Christabel LaMotte: “And every day we shall have less. And then none.”Randolph Henry Ash: “Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?”Christabel LaMotte: “No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

“She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.”

“She had had the idea that the mineral world was a world of perfect, inanimate forms, with an unchanging mathematical order of crystals and molecules beneath its sprouts and flows and branches. She had thought, when she started thinking, about her own transfiguration as something profoundly unnatural, a move from a world of warm change and decay to a world of cold permanence.But as she became mineral, and looked into the idea of minerals, she saw that there were reciprocities, both physical and figurative.”