“But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours—the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party.”

“She surrounded him. Wet, hot. Indescribable. Spasms rocked her, and she lost herself in their rhythm, riding him so fast she was nothing but a blur. But as much as he wished it would never end, no times tables and no images of grungy linoleum floors could keep the flood of her orgasm from inciting his own.”

“Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [...] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over.”

“Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her.”

“She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.”

“So she sat down to morning tea, like any other old lady with a high nose, thin cheeks, a ring on her finger and the usual trappings of rather shabby but gallant old age...”