“She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it”

“And then to win the prize had been incredible. She felt like she was being seen, actually being seen, for the first time in the endless years of being a mother and a wife.”

“She had been tied to an incubus, the memory of a love that had been rejected and had had nowhere to go; she had been locked into a dead relationship and now the last dried skin of it had fallen away, like the scab on a wound, and she was free.”

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”

“Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time.”

“four geological eras had to pass so that human beings would be able to outsing the birds and die for love.”