“The Daughter was weary at her spinning, and reflected aloud, "What if we really could spin coarse straw into fine, pure strands of gold?""If you could accomplish that miracle," her mother admonished, "the responsibility it would entail would tax and exhaust you — mind and body — far beyond the demands of the quotidian tasks you have been given. How blessed it is to live a human, limited life.”

“You could have thrown her into the fire, that’s what you could have done. Then it would save me the task of killing her myself! -Ben Deverill”

“If she were meeting him for the first time and he looked at her like that, she would be spinning on her heel and on the run before you could say Kentucky Derby.”

“What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?”

“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other. ”

“Sometimes I think if we didn’t have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we’d all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we’d have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.”