“Raised to believe that her life would be, as her great-grandmother's was said to have been, one ceaseless round of fixed and settled principles, aims, motives, and activity, she could sometimes think of nothing to do but walk downtown, check out the Bon Marche for clothes she could not afford, buy a cracked crab for dinner and take a taxi home.”

“Sometimes she became overwhelmed with the beauty of life and then she could do nothing but shut her eyes and pretend she was already an angel”

“She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the morning, when she walked out of her beautiful home and unlocked her convertible, she would remember.”

“The fact that she was still alive felt wrong, out of balance. She didn't feel special, or protected, or gods-bound. She thought the gods had acted to protect the roan, and she had just been along for the ride. It was the roan who was special, not she.I should be dead, she thought. If she was dead, then all would have been settled. The warlord's men would have been satisfied to see her body swept away, the roan would have been safe from Beck's whip, the ghost of tyhe man she had killed could have gone to his rest. There was a rounding off - a justice - in her death. But alive, no one was satisfied and no one was safe.”

“Shit. Well, maybe taking her jeans off would make him more inclined to say she could check out his tunnels.Of course, he was pretty much guaranteed to say yes if she let him check out her tunnel again, but ... no.”

“I prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me--life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, thee the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise an extremely sensitive young girl, and my heart remained hardened toward her. [p. 46]”