“Life was a strange circle. She tried not to decipher it, but rather to accept it as it came.”

“People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.”

“The day they came to tell me, I was in one of the gardens with Kiernan, trying to decipher a three-hundred-year-old map of the palace grounds.”

“It is no use trying to assume again the state of innocence and acceptance of the animal or the child. This time it has to be conscious. To circle about in such gladness as his, is the effort of a whole lifetime.”

“A look came into his dark eyes, a new expression she could'nt decipher. He stroked her lips with his thumb and stared at her like he had never seen her before.”

“But this is the kind of thing that fiction is: it's the unlivable life, the strange room tacked onto the house, the extra moon that is circling the earth unbeknownst to science.”