“She denied and feared God in the same breath. She allowed our actions to shame her, and yet was void of shame. I truly believed there was something unnatural about her - a madness only her children could see. My yearning was not to understand it, but to escape it.”

“She wept with shame for her lack of will and with fear for a love she couldn't control.”

“Shame, when she was younger, had stopped her. Fear, as she grew older, trapped the truth within her.”

“And it was no shame to her that she so dreamed. It was no shame that she called before her, one by one, those who had asked her to cross with them the threshold (of marriage) and those who might still ask her. It was no shame that, while her heart said always, "no," she still waited - waited for one whom she knew not, but only knew that she would know him when he came. And it was no shame to her that, even while this was so, she saw herself in the years to come a wife and mother. ”

“It's a fucking shame that she's so intense because she's gorgeous. But there's something completely fucking terrifying about her.”

“She bent her chin to her chest. She mumbled something I did not catch. It sounded like, "Shame on us all for not having stopped it.”