“She knew herself the heart of a king buried in a sepulchre (in the land of his love) while the body of the king is elsewhere. My heart lies buried in there like Coeur de Lion (or whoever it was) wh...”

“She didn't know that all her life would be spent gambling with the stark rigidity of words, words that were coin: save, spend and all the time George with his own counter had found her a way out.”

“I have tasted words, I have seen them. Never had her hands reached out in darkness and felt the texture of pure marble, never had her forehead bent forward and, as against a stone altar, felt safet...”

“The thing she realised in that moment, that fraction of waiting, was lost. Nothing could bring the thing back, no words could make the thing solid and visible and therefore to be coped with. Solid ...”

“run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token...run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your...”

“Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snails bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled ...”

“Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled...”

“He wanted to be a poet,' someone else put in while Maggie hugged Tim and patted his back. 'Said he'd only lacked the words to be one.”

“I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.”

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of em...”