Tanith Lee

I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

Louisa beheld the grounds and house with the calm pleasure of one who has seen nothing, been nowhere, expects everything, and has little imagination.

Pale beauty stands aghast, he said, at the vulgar ugliness of men.

She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death.