“When you can't die, she thought, everything sounds like a clock ticking.”

“The cunning old cow, thought Melena. She is trying that rarest of strategies, telling the truth, and making it sound plausible.”

“To grow a melody?" "You can't grow a melody on purpose,” she said, and slyly added, “you have to plant an accidental.”

“Only he with the hobbled foot knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can appreciate what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us. That we in our sinful souls can ever imagine charity- 'She can't go on for a moment. 'We may not always be able to practice charity, but that in this world we can even imagine it at all! That act of daring requires the greatest challenge,”

“If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, that might be the best way to die.”

“Sometimes thought Liir-his first thought in weeks and weeks-sometimes I hate this marvelous land of ours. It's so much like home, and then it holds out on you.”

“Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.”