“I can't begin to guess her story, except that there were undoubtedly two times or three, when what had happened to her was grievously at odds with what she had expected - so grievously at odds that any return to the faith or the patterns of the time before the event became impossible.”

“But she had recently come to think that in such unhappy times--when the odds were so high against personal happiness--to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best two people could was what really mattered.”

“She scarcely knew what to think except that she was in the presence of a woman who was as close to legendary as any being could get.What stories were told of her! That she had been sequestered in her own manor to prevent men from fighting over her, that she possessed strange powers, that the Wolf had kidnapped her for vengeance but married her for love, that her own brother, mistaking what had happened, had returned her to England by stealth and that Norse and Saxon had come perilously close to war over her.”

“I know that many, if not most, women would have a problem with my acceptance of what happened with Lara. The reality is I shall always be grateful to Lara for helping my husband when I could not do so. I couldn’t have chosen a better or kinder surrogate.”

“Hattie had never been easy to love. She was too quiet, it was impossible to know what she was thinking. And she was angry all of the time and so disdainful when her high expectations weren't met.”

“I realize that a certain school of thoughtsays that who we are is something we construct for ourselves. We build ourselves out of what we think we remember, what we believe to be true about our life; and the possessions we gather around us are supposedly a part of this, that we are, to some extent what we own.”

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”—my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault—as she pounded her fist to her chest three times as if pounding shut a door to keep her guilt from escaping.”