“He had said she was provocative; so she was, she needed to prove she was there to be seen; but the proof always, contradictorily, drove her to further uncertain agony of guilt and self-distaste.”

“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.”

“He knew her, he believed. He would teach her that she was not his possession, he would show her she was free, he would see her flash her wings.”

“She leads you on and baffles you,” said Beatrice. “She wants you to know and not to know. She took care to write down that the box was there. And she buried it.”

“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.”

“There was a moment during this time, when his face was on hers, cheek on cheek, brow on brow, heavy skull on skull, through soft skin and softer flesh. He thought: skulls separate people. In this one sense, I could say, they would say, I lose myself in her. But in that bone box, she thinks and thinks, as I think in mine, things the other won't hear, can't hear, though we go on like this for sixty years. What does she think I am? He had no idea. He had no idea what she was.”

“…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….”