Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

I long for another human face just as I fear it.

But the uproar this caused was nothing compared with the uproar when Katronia noticed [Rosie] had also cut her eyelashes. Various negotiations (including, finally, such desperate measures as "supposing you ever want to eat again") eventually produced the grudging promise that, in return for Katronia keeping her hair cut short, she would leave her eyelashes alone.

Then marry me. For I love you, and I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart.

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: “I will not be nothing.”

One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.