“He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”

“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears.”

“Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily.”

“It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.”

“As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had fail...”

“It was very sad under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death-rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funeral hush.”