“In the morning when Mrs. Pollifax awoke she realized at once that a fateful day was beginning. She lay and thought about this dispassionately, almost wonderingly, because to every life there eventually came a moment when one had to accept the fact that the shape, the pattern, the direction of the future was entirely out of one's hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. There was nothing to do but accept, and from this to proceed, doing the very best that could be done.”

“She wasn't certain of exactly what they had together; she doubted Owen knew, either; but whatever it was, she desperately wanted to hold on to it. They were only at the beginning of what they could become together; if she could help it, she would do anything that she could to keep it from ending.”

“In the last month, I've realized in a way I never had before that this is and will be my life -- this day-to-day work on and for and with Benj. He will improve and develop and there will be many rewarding moments. But he has a lifelong disability and he will always need loads of effort on his behalf, both in every single interaction with him and with his teachers and therapists. It can be extremely exhausting and overwhelming... But the blessings of being his mother far outweigh the worry and stress and fatigue. Truly he has made me an infinitely stronger, more patient and compassionate person. I can do this.”

“Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.”

“Philippa, enviously, wished she could do the same, and then decided she would rather be interesting and sensitive.”

“For an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville.”

“He’d heard of this woman. The Dame de Doubtance, they called her: a madwoman and a caster of horoscopes. Gaultier gave her house-room and men and women came to her from all the known world and had their futures foretold—if she felt like it. She had given some help once to Lymond, on her own severe terms, because of a distant link, it was said, with his family. Plainly, a crazy old harridan. But if she was going to tell Lymond he ought to find a nice girl and marry her, Jerott wanted very much to be there.”