Enchantment

To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.

Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around.

In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?

Like running hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.

I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.

Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.

It was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe.

I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?

"Women's intuition" wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues.

If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?

How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that.

How could you lose me, when you've never had me, never wanted me?

Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free.

Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.

How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future.

Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?

In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat.

More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would.

Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable.

I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb.