“She hadn't lied. She hadn't betrayed anyone's trust; still, she felt she had done something wrong. Or rather, she had not yet done the right thing. Was there a difference between these two sins?”

“You are a very special child," the old handmaid said, stroking Eleonora's hair. "You know that don't you?"Eleonora mumbled a yes."You know you are special, but I think that you aren't sure how."She nodded. That was, indeed, the crux of it.”

“With every choice, even the choice of inactivity, we must shut the door to a host of alternate futures. Each step we take along the path of fate represents a narrowing of potential, the death of a parallel world. The path of fate was more like a tunnel, and it was constricting about her with ever step she took.”

“A slippery fish, flashing scales in the water and a noble fighter on the line, but dull as lead at the bottom of the boat.”

“This divergence of experience was not a stumbling block to conversation; indeed, it was what made the conversation interesting.”

“She had lived in that house fourteen years, and every year she had demanded of John that she be given a pet of some strange exotic breed. Not that she did not have enough animals. She had collected several wild and broken animals that, in a way, had become exotic by their breaking. Their roof would have collapsed from the number of birds who might have lived there if the desert hadn't killed three- quarters of those that tried to cross it. Still every animal that came within a certain radius of that house was given a welcome--the tame, the half born, the wild, the wounded.”

“Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.”