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I dusted the wedding-cake trim with a cloth on the end of a broom, staggering, and looking up and pretending that the ceiling was the floor...

When we had neatened the upstairs rooms we came downstairs together, carrying our dust cloths and the broom and dustpan and mop like a pair of witches walking home.

There were sparkles at the sink where a drop of water was swelling to fall. Perhaps if I held my breath until the drop fell Charles would go away, but I knew that was not true; holding my breath was too easy.

"We'll always be here together, won't we, Constance?"
"Don't you ever want to leave here, Merricat?"
"Where could we go?" I asked her. "What place would be better for us than this? Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people."
"I wonder sometimes." She was very serious for a minute, and then she turned and smiled at me. "Don't you worry, my Merricat. Nothing bad will happen."

Worshipping an external god invented by another man is essentially worshipping that man. (Summarized)

P.23

"Draweth near in the gloom the twilight of the gods."

P.23

The Ring of the Nibelungen doth carry an everlasting curse, but only those who seek it think in terms of "Good" and "Evil"--themselves being at all times "Good."

As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!

The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material suc-cess-to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us!

I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.

[Mrs. Wright,] "she bought the arsenic."
"To kill rats," Constance said to the teapot, and then turned and smiled at me.
"To kill rats," Uncle Julian said. "The only other popular use for arsenic is in taxidermy, and my niece could hardly pretend a working knowledge of that subject."

"The dining room...?" Mrs. Wright said timidly. "Just a glance?"
"Madam." Uncle Julian contrived a bow from his wheel chair, and Mrs. Wright hurried to reach the door and open it for him. "Directly across the hall,"

(Cont in comments)

"In some ways," Uncle Julian sailed on, "a piece of extraordinarily good fortune for me. I am a survivor of the most sensational poisoning case of the century. I have all the newspaper clippings. I knew the victims, the accused, intimately, as only a relative living in the very house could know them. I have exhaustive notes on all that happened. I have never been well since.”
(Cont in comments)

"Arsenic in the sugar," Mrs. Wright said, carried away, hopelessly lost to all decorum.
"I used that sugar." Uncle Julian shook his finger at her. "I used that sugar myself, on my blackberries. Luckily," and he smiled blandly,

(Cont in comments)

"You look well, Julian," Helen Clarke said.
"Afraid to visit here? I apologize for repeating your words, madam, but I am astonished. My niece, after all, was acquitted of murder. There could be no possible danger in visiting here now."
Mrs. Wright made a little convulsive gesture toward her cup of tea and then set her hands firmly in her lap.
(Cont in comments)

Land so fertile a bean grow like a tree and the grass tickles your belly when you walk. And game Buffalo so many they shake the ground enough to jar your teeth. Deer, too by the thousands, and elk. You ever seen an elk? Big deer, they are, big enough that one of them would feed your house for a month or more. …birds so plentiful they make night out of day... Takes hours, sometimes days, for them to fly by…

As he had done on occasion ever since childhood, the Shawnee chief Pucksinwah contemplated the multitude of stars sparkling with such life and beauty in the deep cloudless and moonless sky.Now that the fire had died to a dim-orange bed of coals and the women squatted around it had lapsed into uncommon silence, these jewels of the night seemed to draw even closer and become more tangible, as if waiting to be plucked.

From page 16:

I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world…

From page 16:

I wondered if their parents taught them, …leading regular drills of their children, teaching them with loving care, making sure they pitched their voices right; how else could so many children learn so thoroughly?

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

…lying in my dark room with the trees patterned in shadow on the ceiling…

I liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it and a garden outside (what would flourish, growing on the moon? I must ask Constance) and I was going to have lunch outside in my garden on the moon. Things on the moon were very bright, and odd colors; my little house would be blue.

(Cont)

…, and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once, and I put my hands quietly in my lap. I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry. Besides, each time he repeated himself he thought it was funnier; I knew he might go on like this until he was really sure that no one was listening any more… (cont next update)

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

Not far past the town hall is the big black rock which marks the entrance to the path where I unlock the gate and lock it behind me and go through the woods and am home.
The people of the village have always hated us.

I had already risen in importance from my lunch with him ... Even the page-boy by the swing doors glanced at me with respect. My companion accepted it as natural, of course, he knew nothing of the ill-carved ham of yesterday. I found the change depressing, it made me despise myself. I remembered my father and his scorn of superficial snobbery.

(Cont)
… it will not matter. There would be no sense of strain.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, “never mind, come and sit down. We needn’t talk to each other unless we feel like it.”
We sat down, and he gave me the menu, leaving me to choose, and went on with his hors d’oeuvre as though nothing had happened.
His quality of detachment was peculiar to himself, and I knew that we might continue thus, without speaking, throughout the meal and … (cont next)

How young and inexperienced I must have seemed, and how I felt it, too. One was too sensitive, too raw, there were thorns and pin-pricks in so many words that in reality fell lightly on the air.

The scrubby vineyards and the crumbling stones become things of no account, for if I wish I can give rein to my imagination, and pick foxgloves and pale campions from a wet, streaking hedge.
Poor whims of fancy, tender and un-harsh. They are the enemy to bitterness and regret, and sweeten this exile we have brought upon ourselves.