“To look into the mirror is to see the future, in blood and rubies.”

“Aren't these the finest treasures? Each one springs up, and becomes more red than rubies, more fine than diamonds adn more valuable, so we are told; and before you can run back here again to look, the petals have begin to drop and the leaves to yellow. Look, they sag, they fall. Are they the more wonderful because they live such a short time.”

“The surface of the shoes seemed to pulse with hundreds of reflections and refractions. In the firelight, it was like looking at boiling corpuscles of blood under a magnifying glass.”

“But there was the mirror in which I would glimpse his handsome form, because mirrors don't lie about men, only women.”

“But his face had that hollow look, as if there was something gone... you know that look. The inward focus. Distantly attentive to the home you're missing, or the someone you're missing. That look that a bird has when it turns it dry reptilian eye on you. That look that doesn't see you because the mind is filled up with someone it would rather see.”

“I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.”

“How she wanted to put away adult things and go back to seeing through a looking-glass, darkly.”