#fleetling extracts

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap.

Forget him, whatever the cost—forget him! But he would not be forgotten, that was the trouble.

Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.

I was young then and able to banish things, but seeds do grow.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

I was fishing for information that might break my heart, a flaw of the human condition.

What did this woman need, in whose eyes there always burned some enigmatic little fire?

And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel?