“She had told Erstwhile too much in the past, and thus he knew that occasionally she did go crazy. Sometimes it was when she felt particularly trapped or hopeless, or when the tunnels were unusually dark or stuffy, or when she got stuck in a crawl-through. Sometimes it happened for no obvious reason at all. She would feel a terrible panic tightening her chest and giving her heart a queasy lollop, she would be fighting for breath . . . and then she would be recovering somewhere, shuddering and sick, devastation around her and her fingernails broken from clawing at the rock walls and ceilings.”

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.”

“When she was younger, she felt that he wanted to know everything about her, but she was sometimes afraid to tell too much. She was afraid he would know her too well, that he would find some weakness in her, some element that would turn him away, maybe even a quality she didn't even realize she possessed.”

“Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life - with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.”

“Sometimes she felt that her heart would ssurely break. But she knew that hearts did not literally break because their owners were unhappy - and foolish. How dreadfully foolish she had been. Yet she clung to the memories as to a lifeline.”

“Right now the nightmares were in her waking hours so she needed to stay asleep. She was broken. Shattered. Devastated. Crushed. There was nothing left of the woman she had been. She could see it in her eyes. When she was awake she had to acknowledge her brokenness. She had to admit to herself that she might never be fixed. It was too much to think about. Her boy had to come back and, until he did, she needed to stay in her dreams.”