“All during Lena's life, Ella had worried about how the world could harm her. But the world could love her as well.”

“Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.”

“Only later during her prayers had it come to her how cunning Satan could be. Her love for Marcus could become a tool against her, for when her heart and mind were on Marcus, Julia lay forgotten.Nothing must distract her from her mission here. And no one.”

“But of course, it had all been her – by her and about her, and now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky”

“[...] Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter.”

“It was frustrating when people loved you and took an interest in you and sometimes worried about you and personally cared what you did with yourself. Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good bout yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could clip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give." (Lena, 194)”