“...she had brought harm to him, in the believe that nothing mattered, that no moment had consequences beyond the moment itself. She had agreed to kill him without realizing that he would die".”

“She believed in the miraculous. Or she had, until she reached an age when, all of a sudden, she realized that the life she was living, was in fact, her life. The clay of her being, so long infinitely malleable, had been formed, hardened into what now seemed a palpable, unchanging object. A shell she inhabited. It shocked her then. It shocked her now, like a slap in the face. ”

“Then there was survival. There was going on, as she had always gone on, without much joy, against her will, against her instincts, without the stomach for it, but on and on and on, without relief, without release, without a hand to reach out and touch her heart. Without kindness or comfort. But on. Forced into such poverty, imprisoned in such despair, there was only one thing she was sure she could do. She could survive.”

“Standing in the center of the crowd, his solitude was enormous. He felt that in all the vast and frozen space in which he lived his life - every hand needy, every heart wanting something from him - everybody had a reason to be and a place to land. Everybody but him. For him there was nothing. In all the cold and bitter world, there was not a single place for him to sit down.”

“She was the beautiful, lethal, insinuating spider he had waited for all his life.”

“She had been adept at the beginning and the end of things, and now she saw that whatever pleasures life had to offer lay in the middle. She could find some peace there.”

“She was the beautiful, lethal,insinuating spider he had waited for all his life. She was the final knife in his heart. He opened his heart with gladness.”