“she's so caught up she's unaware she's no longer the prisoner here, I am”

“Janey accuses me of chasing jailbait. She bursts into angry tears, asking if it's because she's getting older. It's true. She's aging more noticeably every day—while I am standing still. I prefer the stillness here. I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.”

“It's crowded," she murmured as her eyes laughed into his."The longer we're in here..." His thighs brushed against hers as a toddler wiggled up to the glass. "The fonder I am of snakes.”

“She sprinted after him, grabbing him by the shoulder just as she caught up. “I … I am sorry.”He let out a deep sigh. “As am I.” He yanked his shoulder free and continued walking back inside the castle.”

“She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven.....Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.”

“Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants' bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.”