“RainSoft rain, summer rainWhispers from bushes, whispers from trees.Oh, how lovely and full of blessingTo dream and be satisfied.I was so long in the outer brightness,I am not used to this upheaval:Being at home in my own soul,Never to be led elsewhere.I want nothing, I long for nothing,I hum gently the sounds of childhood,And I reach home astoundedIn the warm beauty of dreams.Heart, how torn you are,How blessed to plow down blindly,To think nothing, to know nothing,Only to breathe, only to feel.”

“I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.”

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

“I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.”

“Pelimburg is a city of rain and mist and spray. It’s supposed to be my home, but a lifetime lived in my mother’s cage of a mansion means that I barely know it. I’ve only ever seen the city from the confines of a carriage; now I breathe deep, tasting how different the air is, how sweet the drops feel on my tongue. Up on the hillside, the rain seems bitter and darker.”

“And the last seven months meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived.”