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There must be some reason, I thought, why we should go on year after year, with this lump of debt, scrailing earth down to stone, giving so much and with no return. There must be some reason why I was made quiet and homely and slow, and then given this stone of love to mumble.

He had sunk so deep in himself that it would have been a relief to hear him roar out or swear. But everything went in—the whole storm—inside himself.

There ought to be some way of putting yourself beyond pain. The days did it mostly, but it crept back and crawled up in darkness, thrust in hard when light was gone. I could sleep, and in the morning wake up and think “Tonight I can sleep again”—but this was no way to live!—the days only deserts crossed between night and night.

There was no touch of his to remember,—only his words; and words are cold, tomb-like things, lasting longer perhaps than even the strongest and most fierce touch, but stony things.

She told me all this in a single pouring, as one who’d been shut inside too long, and all her mild comfortableness was gone.

He seemed more cheerful in a way, like a man who had touched bottom, going down through so much that no more seemed possible, and had begun to hope.

There was something in her—or lacking—that kept her from seeing outside the warped and enormous “I.” It came to me that she would do anything she chose, because she saw wrongly and did not need any excuse but desire… What is sanity, after all, except the control of madness? But it must be something more, too, a positive thing,—inclusion of love and detachment from self…

Those years went slowly for us. Slow because heavy with the weight of things done, and the greater weight of things unfinished and still to be learned.

I think it is strange how much the mind can endure and still hold on to its shell of sanity. Does too-great fear annul itself? Too much sickness cancel pain?…An awful patience seemed to come over us, a numbness that was in itself a kind of death.

Dad looked at Mother, and I saw the awful unmasking of his face, as if all the underground terror and despair were brought to the surface by his hope, and I felt a jab of pity and love for him stronger than I’d ever known before.

Out of poverty fear, and fear bringing hate; and out of hate a sly violence, and sometimes insanity or death.

There was still the awful torture of hope that would die only with life.

I thought that relief from hope would come, but hope’s an obsession that never dies.

Knowledge is a two-edged knife, all blade, with no handle for even the owner to strike out with.

"Chrishun’s got a bile-stomach," she said. "It makes all his words come out sour."