For the first time, I notice the lax skin at Mrs. Nightwing's jaw, the fine down that lies upon her cheek like the imprint of a childe's hand, and I wonder what it must be like watching yourself soften under the years, unable to stop it. what it's like measuring your days in perfecting girls' curtsies and drinking nightly glasses of sherry, trying to keep up with the world as it pulls you spinning into the furure, knowing you are always one step behind it.

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice... No one can live in the light all the time.

In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.

I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.

It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become.

It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.

She's no beauty, mate