“She is in search of a language that is tactile, palatial, and self-immolating—a language that will correspond to her latent desire to disintegrate and expand. To become the room.”

“There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”

“To use the language of a war correspondent, which was, she knew, what Isabel Jacobs happened to be, she would have to say thay Kitty Finch was smiling at her with hostile intent.”

“No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No woman delights in poverty. No woman yields when she can prevail. No woman is honestly meek.”

“Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket.”

“Her past was finally speaking to her in a language she understood.”