“It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?”

“Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.”

“Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away.”

“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”

“I am the only real truth I know.”

“Do you think that too," she said, "that I have slept too long in the moonlight?”

“At twenty-four she imagined with dread that she was growing old.”

“She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.”

“Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us”

“One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.”

“Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.”