Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

Cities have distinct personalities. It's a matter of knowing it.

Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up.

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.

Perhaps I fear him because I could love him again, and in loving him, I would come to need him, and in needing him, I would again be his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for me is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in his eyes.

There are too many other inexplicable things around us--horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you in and then inevitably disenchant you. Back to the predictable and humdrum. The prince is never going to come, everybody knows that; and maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.