“She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved.”

“She was feeling more vulnerable and alone than she had felt in years. And incredibly frightened. For all her fiercely held independence, she still desperately craved solace. A secret desire to be held, protected. Loved? No, that was going to far. Love was a manipulation. A lie. Lust was more honest. Lust only messed with your body not your mind.”

“She was like a drug. The most addicting kind, and he had a problem—he was pretty sure that she was developing feelings for him. He had no idea what to do with that, or with is own feelings, which were definitely getting in his way. This whole "no emotional attachment" thing had gone straight to shit. Because Mallory Quinn was emotionally attached to every person she ever met, and she had a way of making that contagious. He craved contact with her in a way that he wasn't experienced with.”

“Over the past year, since breaking up with Martin, she had begun to notice the foreignness of the place, to suffer from the chill that dried her skin and never really left her, even in the summer. And yet she couldn't make up her mind to leave. She depended on the place now; she had grown attached to it with the obstinacy with which people become attached only to things that hurt them.”

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”

“Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.”