“Real poetry is like a sail at the open sea.”

“When you're sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It's always better underneath the open sky.”

“She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose]....”

“He's like a child, but without a child's capacity for joy.”

“I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth”

“I was a tongue, a gazette. The bearer of "the truth of the whispers." I knew of hollowed books, trunks with false bottoms, and the meanders of secret corridors. I knew how to open hidden drawers in your escritoire, how to unseal your letter and make you think no one had touched it. If I had been in your room, I left the hair around your lock the way you had tied it. If you trusted the silence of the night, I had overheard your secrets.”

“Like all intelligent people, she functions very well in extreme disorder.”