“Such bliss is not meant to last. In my husband's house, my children were my real gifts.”

“He was with me, beside me, inside me, and I did not care that my children were asleep, alone at home, or that the neighbors might come to know. He burned the fear out of me until all was left was desire.”

“It was a crying shame!”

“There is no right and wrong, and precepts are for fools. Every thing is just as it is! And we must experience things without condemning them, because if we condemn them, then we are becoming too involved.”

“And after that until the end, there was no relief from being a girl with chores that she wasn’t being paid for, a girl with no new sandals and a friend who wasn’t a friend but a mistress, and a family that wasn’t but people who owned her and ordered her about, and nothing at all but her pretty breasts and her round bottom and her misbehaving hair to help her feel any different.”

“Doing your duty is having no sense of guilt about what you are doing.”

“This is when I forgave my parents. This big secret that was not ready to reveal itself was the reason my parents had sent us here. This colossal secret was the reason my parents had been absent from their children, had never talked too much, but clearly had plenty to give. This is when I forgave my parents. On the remainder of our silent journey to the island, my soul was anything but mute. This is when I mourned the death of Murdoch and Elizabeth Benedict for the first time.”