“Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful, white, ring-adorned hands and began to demonstrate. She obviously could see that her explanation could not make anything understood, but, knowing that her speech was pleasant and her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining.”

“Her hands were to her face but she could see through the prison of her fingers could see them how they were beautiful wrapped in light swathed in the bright angelic robes of Acceptance”

“She looked at him and smiled. She placed her hand upon his shoulder.He took her right hand in his left and placed his other at her waist, looking at her as if she were an unexploded bomb.They began to dance.”

“Anna Quangel wishes she could stroke her husband's hand, but she doesn't dare. She just brushes it, as if by accident, and says, 'Oh, sorry, Otto!' He looks at her in surprise, but doesn't say anything. They walk on.”

“Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.”

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”