I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens.

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from.

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

I'm not lost, because I haven't any idea where to go that I might get lost on the way to. I'd like to get lost, because then I'd know where I was going, you see.

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.