“And a blank page was quite beautiful on its own, she'd found. There were already so many words, so many voices in the world. She flinched at contributing to the cacophony.”

“Here it was like wind or rain, a sign of the seasons, just part of the weather-- another element of this country that took hold of her, even as it eluded her grasp”

“A love gone bad, a sea of bitterness: such an everyday thing. As ordinary as the tide, and perhaps as relentless. But tides turned, too.”

“Most women found that the few weeks after a miscarriage were extremely fertile, as if the body wanted to quickly rectify its mistake.”

“I stepped closer still. He closed his eyes again and covered my hand with his own. 'You smell of violets. You always smell of violets,' he said. 'You've no idea how many times I have walked these moors and smelled them and thought you were near. On and on I walked, following the scent of you, and you were never there. When I saw you in the hall tonight, I thought I had finally gone mad.”

“Stella nodded. She was so glad Janet had found a new doctor after all that suffering. One thing that had astounded her was how the women—smart, educated, strong women—never wanted to bother their caregivers. They silently suffered, trying to be low-maintenance patients despite their horrifying experiences.”

“From the first note I knew it was different from anything I had ever heard.... It began simply, but with an arresting phrase, so simple, but eloquent as a human voice. It spoke, beckoning gently as it unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, the tension growing with each repeat of the phrasing, and yet somehow it grew more abandoned, wilder with each note. His eyes remained closed as his fingers flew over the strings, spilling forth surely more notes than were possible from a single violin. For one mad moment I actually thought there were more of them, an entire orchestra of violins spilling out of this one instrument. I had never heard anything like it--it was poetry and seduction and light and shadow and every other contradiction I could think of. It seemed impossible to breathe while listening to that music, and yet all I was doing was breathing, quite heavily. The music itself had become as palpable a presence in that room as another person would have been--and its presence was something out of myth.”