She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower.

She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his.

I can't leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls... She's too precious to give up.

She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, was the last seed of hope for her, she didn't know how to nurture it or if it could live.

What he brought out was a wooden gag they put in someone's mouth before doing something drastic, like cutting off a leg.

We are not philosophers, we are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to judge.

If you are feeling more yourself, there is a problem best addressed immediately," said the queen. "In my nightshirt?" The king wriggled, as ever, out of straightforward obedience. "Your attendants. I have spoken to them. You will speak to them as well." "Ah. They have seen me in my nightshirt." He looked down at his sleeve, embroidered with white flowers. "Not in your nightshirt, though.