“The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.”

“She blushes like a rose in bloom, though I ripped her up from the roots long ago.”

“There was a zone she had not explored. She could use the same counter, the same sort of password that she used with all these people, but she had passed over in the twinkling of an eye into another forest. This forest was reality. There, the very speaking of the words, conjured up answering sigil, house and barn and terrace and castle and river and little plum tree. A whole world was open. She looked in through a wide doorway.”

“I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.”

“What she had long believed was not true, and now the world was wide open to discover what was.It is like all my life I thought the sky was green.”

“...Emma still had a joyless look, and, habitually, at the corners of her mouth, she had that tightness that crumples the faces of old maids and bankrupts.”