“Songs to Herself:She waved at all the people on the trains & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

“She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

“Her happiness floated like waves of ocean along the coast of her life. She found lyrics of her life in his arms but she never sung her song.”

“But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself.”

“When she came to her senses again she cut off all contact with him. It had not been easy, but she had steeled herself. The last time she saw him she was standing on a platform in the tunnelbana at Gamla Stan and he was sitting in the train on his way downtown. She had stared at him for a whole minute and decided that she did not have a grain of feeling left, because it would have been the same as bleeding to death. Fuck you.”

“Seven times I have despised my soul:The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height.The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled.The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy.The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong.The fifth time when she forbode for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength.The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.”