“My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning.”

“Here, baby. Here’s a towel.” She reached back, unable to face the man, and grasped the towel he handed her. Of course, it was a dish towel and not much good.”

“She read on and on, enraptured. She could not understand half, but it excited her oddly, like words in a foreign language sung to a beautiful air. She followed the poem vaguely as she followed the Latin in her missal, guessing, inventing meanings for herself, intoxicated by the mere rush of words. And yet she felt she did understand, not with her eyes or her brain, but with some faculty she did not even know she possessed.”

“Marie Antoinette. Her last words were,"Pardon me sir. I did not mean to do it,"to a man whose foot she stepped on before she was executed by the guillotine”

“She did not know why it seemed to her so tragic to cry in her sleep.”

“I told her yeah, but there was no skin on my voice and she heard the bones in my words like I did. And I knew.”