“Once again, her parents' problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.”

“Jessie rummaged through her purse for the necessary equipment. If there were one thing, Baley had once said solemnly, that had resisted mechanical improvement since medieval times, it was a woman's purse.”

“She'd run her life according to the Prophecies and now there were no more Prophecies. She must be feeling like a train which had reached the end of the line but still had to keep going, somehow. From now on she'd be able to go through life with everything coming as a surprise, just like everyone else. What luck.”

“The years of her life tumbled out onto the floor like marbles that she would never be able to gather up again in one bowl. The years of her life had been a made puzzle that one day gets unmade, the pieces all scattered.”

“I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.”

“My heart tumbled in pieces at her feet as she chipped away at it with her wondrous ways, and it didn't form a whole again until half a year had passed and the end product was a living, beating organ in the palm of her hands.”