“...her tone more disapproving than dismayed.”

“He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.”

“Why did she [Madame Curie] seek to tame this mystery, which in the hands of others turned a multitude to ashes? Her work exploded with the violence of a thousand suns, but I must tell her that it was not her fault, the way they twisted her creation, tampered with her dreams."I will tell her."They said she was inhuman, heartless, but it is not so. She is here now. Weeping, she awaits me, She is carrying balm for our hands. [p, 56]”

“There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news.”

“his discomfort seemed to soften her, for when he met her eyes again, they were kind.”

“Away from the bright motion of the party, she carried her sadness like a dark stone clenched in her palm.”

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”