“The things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of medieval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever understood.”

“She absorbed the terror and beauty of him and his world. Of every moment over the past days. All of it, filling her up like the first breath she'd ever taken. And never had she loved life more.”

“I was thinking about his hands on me. Nobody had ever treated me like that. Not ever. But now they had. And how was I ever going to forget it? I would never. I would never.”

“Medieval Italian life had recently become so fascinating for Vronsky that he even began wearing his hat and a wrap thrown over his shoulder in a medieval fashion, which was very becoming to him.”

“Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.”

“The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. ..”