"Her heart beat a little faster, thinking about how there might well be as many wonders beneath the surface of things as there are above, if one could but figure out how to see them." p 31
"Woman was created last of all, after all the animals and after Adam himself. Why would God have done it thus if He intended woman as a lesser creature? Would he not then have made her just after the animals and before Adam?" p155Things I Didn't Like:
New Englanders spent much of the year shrouding their bodies from winter's frigid gloom, but August, hot and fragrant, drew them into the open. Out-of-doors became a state of mind as well as a place. In the meadows, vanilla-scented wildflowers the locals called joe pye weed broke into pink feathering blossoms and were soon papered with monarchs. p 47 ARC
Anna was a blade of grass, swaying in the wind in concert with all the other blades. Louisa was a rare bird poking its head above them, a thing with purple feathers and a strangely hooked beak. p 157 ARC
Life was moving on and she approached each day the way she would cope with a rotting front tooth and no dentist nearby. One learned to smile with her lips closed. p 281 ARCThings I Didn't Like:
"However, in the end, our assessments and opinions counted for (and continue to count for) precious little, and we have kept our public speculation to a minimum for fear of government reprisal, so charged with distrust and suspicion have the esteemed island elders (and elderess) become following last year's unfortunate visit by that predatory armada of land speculators from the States, harboring designs for turning our lovely, island Shangri-la into a denatured resort destination for American cruise ships." p 4
"Each member in deliberate provocation of the High Island Council had marched single file into last Tuesday's open session wearing cartoon masks and making loud duck sounds - sounds which any sentient Nollopian knows by now are forbidden - while holding aloft large cardboard containers of a certain recently outlawed brand of American oatmeal." p 48
"There is no such thing as accident or misspeak, only grossly underapplied discoursal perspicacity, with unguarded exposure to distractional digression." p 55-56
"Ours continues to be a free, open society. There will be no censures or prosecutions for exercising one's free speech rights in service to the laws of this nation, even if those rights entail criticism of the High Council." p 78
"Now, Rory isn't a very religious man - at least I never thought so. But he became at that moment positively apoplectic - moving to assault the representative with everything available to him in his verbal arsenal, utterly without restraint - letting loose with a veritable, vituperative salvo - nothing printable here." p 122
"Disorder to match the clutter and chaos of our marvelous language. Words upon words, piled high, toppling over, thoughts popping, correspondence and conversation overflowing." p 206Things I Didn't Like:
"It was during that performance of Rigoletto that opera imprinted itself on Katsumi Hosokawa, a message written on the pink undersides of his eyelids that he read to himself while he slept. Many years later, when everything was business, when he worked harder than anyone in a country whose values are structured on hard work, he believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music." p15 (I read the large print edition, so page numbers may be different)
"Their eyes clouded over for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. All of the love and longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear." p266-267
"It was impossible to say that her singing had improved, but there as something in her interpretation of the lines that had shifted almost imperceptibly. She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room." p348
"Every now and then she wouldn't bring out the book at all. She would say she was tired. She would say that so much beauty hurt her. I remember feeling almost frantic, such a dependency I had come to feel for those paintings. But it was the rest from it, the waiting, that made us love the book so madly. I could have had one life, but instead I had another because of this book my grandmother protected." p 378Things I Didn't Like:
"I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty...Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived." p 23
"Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it." p82Things I Didn't Like:
"Despite the crude simplicity of the Wharfton homes and the endless work, life outside the wall had a raw decency for a moment. At least no one actually starved. Her parents' arrest and continued absence were making her question things she'd taken for granted and see the impoverished community outside the wall with new eyes. Perhaps the three advanced babies from their sector were simply payment for the water, mycoprotien, and electricity the Enclave gave them all. Perhaps the exchange, stripped of its veneer of privilege and promise, was that simple. And was it worth it?" p 35 of ARC
"Where the route circumvented large boulders, the packed path was cool under her bare feet, but most of the way lay in bright sunlight, and she felt like everything prickled - the bit of grit between her toes, the grasshopper's flecking at her hem, the itch of heat behind her ears." p52 of ARCThings I Didn't Like:
"Just cause I was a girl in 1941, don't think I was some sissy. Shoot, I saw stuff that would've made that bully Farley Peck pee right through his pants." p 1
"Hey, Farley. Look what the dog dragged in."Things I Didn't Like:
"It's cat," I said. "Look what the cat dragged in." I should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn't help correcting such dim-witted tormentors. Even bullies should have standards. p 27
Heyer books (several)
