“I felt the reckless abandon of one who knows she stands already among the damned. "Why not, then, another sin?”

“I do think he hated him as one man will hate another who draws off the affection of a beloved.”

“When I looked at my hands and wrists, marred by the marks of small burns from cook pots and flying embers, every red weal or white pucker brings to my mind's eye that eternal fire, and the writhing masses of the damned, among whom I must expect to spend eternity.”

“If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.”

“I was like one who forgets all day to eat until the scent from some other's roasting pan reminds her she's ravenous.”

“Strip by strip the lash carved into Grace's shuddering flesh. My tears were falling by then, heavy drops, joining in the leaf dust with the blood that had begun to trickle from the table. My limbs were so weak that I could not even raise a hand to wipe the mucus that dripped from my nose.She had been lying with her head faced away from me. She lifted it then, and turned, so that we looked at one another. If an anvil had fallen from the sky at that moment and landed upon me, I could not have felt more crushed.”

“The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own.”