“Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.”

“There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.”

“She always set three alarms for fear that the first employees to arrive would discover her sleeping - a Goldilocks without her bears”

“Just leave her alone. You're annoying her.' 'I'm not annoying her. She doesn't even know how to be annoyed. She's, what, a week old?''She's three months.''She's three months in our years, but what is she in baby years?”

“I fell in love with her the moment she was late, though neither one of us knew it at the time because she hadn’t arrived yet.”

“Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, she still showed traces of her former beauty and seemed much younger than her years. This is generally true of women who remain serene in spirit, fresh in their impressions, and spontaneously warmhearted right to the edge of old age. One might add that in this way, and only in this way, they retain their beauty in old age too.”