“She imagined people picking up the newspapers she dropped through their doors, reading about a world they never visited. For the first time it occurred to her that her classmates had been right. Except it wasn’t just one ghost, but many, one in every flat. Floating through the walls, communicating only through the strange words and symbols they left in the lift.”

“She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words,just large enough for her and Farid to pass through....”

“She closed her hands around his and shut her eyes, imagining their bed cut free of this strange prison, floating through space or on the surface of the ocean, just the two of them alone.”

“Silly little plastic belt, made for a skinny pinny; it could barely tie around her. She managed, though - a tiny white bow. Waiting, she folded her hands and realized how every single time she went by this hospital, the same two thoughts occurred to her: that she'd been born here and that her father's body had been brought here after his suicide. She'd been through some things, but never mind. She straightened her back. Other people had been through things, too.”

“She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with it. Anything really interesting absorbed her so that she never knew what was going on about her. The little girls to whose houses she went visiting had found this out, and always hid away their story-books when she was expected to tea. If they didn't do this, she was sure to pick one up and plunge in, and then it was no use to call her, or tug at her dress, for she neither saw nor heard anything more, till it was time to go home.”

“World events are moving very rapidly now. I pick up the Bible in one hand, and I pick up the newspaper in the other. And I read almost the same words in the newspaper as I read in the Bible. It’s being fulfilled every day round about us.”