“And quick strokes of other less intimate adventuresFlashed in her wounded eyes like fireflies.”

“But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of the other! The girl lies in my bed, but there is no good reason why it should be a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover—I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her—but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate.”

“A look came into his dark eyes, a new expression she could'nt decipher. He stroked her lips with his thumb and stared at her like he had never seen her before.”

“The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.”

“they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”

“...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.”