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21 " Hers was a small and lonely life, a rigorous servitude in preparation for a bigger life, as she tried to see it; yet now, just beneath the thinning fabric of her existence, she sensed an invisible roiling of vast, terrifying, dangerous things—things that would play with you if you pleased them, things that would kill you if you proved a disappointment. "
― Olga Grushin , Forty Rooms
22 " The real explanations are usually the simplest, and often the saddest. "
― Olga Grushin , The Line
23 " Was it indeed true that she had spent her best years as a fairy-tale princess locked away in a tower—a confinement of her choosing, a confinement with many comforts, but one with barred windows and locked doors all the same? "
24 " Everyone is born as a light, a naked spirit, a pure longing to know the world. Some lights are dimmer, and some brighter; the brightest ones have the godlike capacity not only to know the world but to create it anew, time and time again. The light shines purest in your childhood, but as you move farther into life, it begins to fade. It doesn't diminish, exactly, but it becomes harder to reach: every year you live through calcifies around your soul like a new ring on a tree trunk until the divine word can barely make itself heard under the buildup of earthly flesh. "
25 " Joy leaks out when there are enough cracks. "
― Olga Grushin , The Charmed Wife
26 " I suspect I do not like kisses in general--perhaps my blood is stirred by poetry alone--but I have no grounds for comparison. "