Cassandra's grandmother smiled then, only it wasn't a happy smile. Cassandra thought she knew how it felt to smile like that. She often did so herself when her mother promised her something she really wanted but knew might not happen.

Oh, there was harm indeed for a young lady flattered by the brief attentions of a handsome man.

Time had a way of moulding people into shapes they themselves no longer recognised.

Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings.

...She's understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people.

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.

Nell was not one for friends and had never hidden her distaste for most other humans, their neurotic compulsion for the acquisition of allies.