“My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.”

“At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore.”

“You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?""I've a knife in my boot," she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands.”

“I think that I shall never knowWhy I am thus, and I am so.Around me, other girls inspireIn men the rush and roar of fire,The sweet transparency of glass,The tenderness of April grass,The durability of granite;But me- I don't know how to plan it.The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlockWere- shall we say?- born out of wedlock.They broke my heart, they stilled my song,And said they had to run along,Explaining, so to sop my tears,First came their parents or careers.But ever does experienceDeny me wisdom, calm, and sense!Though she's a fool who seeks to captureThe twenty-first fine, careless rapture,I must go on, till ends my rope,Who from my birth was cursed with hope.A heart in half is chaste, archaic;But mine resembles a mosaic-The thing's become ridiculous!Why am I so? Why am I thus?”

“But the problem was that I had retreated so far into myself - shielding myself from the ghosts and memories of this place - that I had become reliant upon the comfort and rituals and plans.”

“(...)I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed but my illusions(...)”