It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose].

One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda

The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.

She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee. "Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen. "Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee." "That seems sensible," said Ellen.

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good.

The sisters worked from dawn to dusk. One of them was an idiot; she started shaving her legs and marrying tax inspectors, so she was no good.