Even the ugliest swan is still more beautiful than the loveliest crown on the fence, Anna thought

But pain is an impatient customer. It wouldn't be long before it demanded attention.

Anna’s conclusions were these: That fire is beautifully cruel. That fusion occurs only at a specific heat. That blood, in fact, can boil. That the dissolution of an affair is an entropic reaction, and the disorder it tends toward is flammable. That a heart will burn. And burn and burn and burn.

Anna loved and didn’t love sex. Anna needed and didn’t need it. Her relationship with sex was a convoluted partnership that rose from both her passivity and an unassailable desire to be distracted.

There are no accidents, Anna. Everything correlates. Everything connects. Every detail bears a consequence. One instant begets the next. And the next. And the next.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in ghosts. The ghosts believe in you.

Is that not always the case? Given any two people in a relationship, one will always love more, the other less. Right?

A man can smell a woman's sadness

Four simple chambers.A thousand complicated doors.One of them is yours.

Solitude was her anchor. A familiar misery, and anymore the safest, most sensible approach.

The deepest sleep is meant only for children and perfect fools.

A mistake made once is an oversight. The same mistake made twice? An abberation. A blunder. But a third time?" Doktor Messerli shook her head. "Whatever's been done has been done to an end. Your will is at work. You beg a result. A repercussion. A precedent has been established. You will get what you want. And there's no need to seek out these mistakes. For now it is they who seek you.

I’ve never been nearly as alone as I always say I am

Walling herself off circumvented the risk of real closeness between two people and the eventual, unavoidable loss that always accompanies love. Liberating herself from the concern of others served a sinister purpose as well. There were fewer people to whom Anna was accountable. It’s the easiest way to lie and not get caught: make yourself matter to no one

A secret's safest hiding place is in the open.

But there are times to talk to the dead, times when the dead want to talk.

Ghosts,” Doktor Messerli continued, “aren’t always the spirits of the human dead bound to the earth. A ghost can be the residual feeling that follows an act you have accomplished but feel bad about. Or the act itself. Something you’ve been or done that you cannot escape.

Shames the shadow of love she thought

Even the loveliest shoulders can bear but so much.

Let’s get you one, Anna.”“A lover?”Edith rolled her eyes. “No. A fucking houseplant. Yes, a lover.” Edith smirked. “It’ll cheer you up!

No one is promised a tomorrow. She had been wrong about every man she loved or said she loved. She’d been wrong about everything. She’d entered into her life in the middle of its story. She had confused herself with the actress who portrayed her.

There is a correlation between the severity of a person’s moods and a lack of self-knowledge.