“It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.”

“Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.”

“There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.”

“It's unbecoming," she agreed. "A perfect word for my new life. Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un.”

“It's heaven to know that it's still possible to run, though she doesn't know what she's running from.”

“She is no longer I, she is too long ago, she is only she...”

“He didn’t remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”