Elena had always felt like the center of her own world - who doesn't? The world arranged itself around her like petals around the stem of a flower. This way the meadows, that way the woodland. Over here, the baryn's estate, out there, the hills that hug the known world close and imply a world at beyond. She could never come up with the edge of a world, because it always kept going on beyond. She moved the center of the world as she walked. The world was balanced on her head.

And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.

The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.

It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?

I learned failure early and mastered it.