"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between."

"My tears are like the quiet drift of petals from some magic rose; and all my grief flows from the rift of unremembered skies and snows. I think that if I touched the earth, it would crumble; it is so sad and beautiful, so tremulously like a dream."

"Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just that so very often they were dead, and in a book."