“It helps nothing to cry and complain, to pluck our hair. There’s no difference between getting mad at our fate and getting mad at rocks and stones. The ears of Fate are completely deaf; anyway, it doesn’t matter whether she hears our voices or not; when the moment comes, she only speaks of the things she has already designed and rains the orders she has already planned.”

“Fate has a way of getting what she wants, no matter how we try to avoid it.”

“Sophie has a gift," she said. "She has the Sight. She can see what others do not. In her old life she often wondered if she was mad. Now she knows that she is not mad but special.There, she was only a parlor maid, who would likely have lost her position once her looks had faded. Now she is a valued member of our household, a gifted girl with much to contribute.”

“The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.”

“That was the way things were. It was like she was mad all the time. Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over - but in another way. Only there was nothing to be mad at. Unless the store. But the store hadn’t asked her to take the job. So there was nothing to be mad at. It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated.”

“...it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking.”