Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.

Things do not happen, we must make them happen

Mary awoke from her nightmare with a pounding heart, convinced that she had only imagined Elizabeth's cruel plot. A full moon was shining into her chamber, illuminating everything around her in silvery light. That was when she noticed for the first time that there were bars on her window.

We are more than our bodies, it is true; but we cannot be divorced from them. They are us, and the only way in which we can see one another. Perhaps the gods are above this, but in their mercy, they have given us the guise of bodies.

The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.

So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

I was ever the realist, sometimes to my sorrow. But seldom to my regret.