Anatomy: A Love Story

Someone should tell you you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eigth of August, just because.

My heart is yours, Hazel Sinnett," Jack said. "Forever. Beating or still.

It was an impossible situation, a trick of society as a whole: force women to live at the mercy of whichever man wants them but shame them for anything they might do to get a man to want them.

Perhaps you could take only one book with you to read at the gardens. After all, you'll only be there for the afternoon." Hazel choked on her tea. "One book? One book? Now you're being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? It what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.

What were miracles, but science that man didn’t yet understand? And didn’t that make it all the more miraculous that the secrets of the universe were out there, codes one might decipher if smart enough, tenacious enough?

My beating heart is still yours, the letter said, and I’ll be waiting for you.

IT’S THE LESSON YOUNG GIRLS EVERYWHERE were taught their entire lives—don’t be seduced by the men you meet, protect your virtue—until, of course, their entire lives depended on seduction by the right man. It was an impossible situation, a trick of society as a whole: force women to live at the mercy of whichever man wants them but shame them for anything they might do to get a man to want them. Passivity was the ultimate virtue. Heaven forbid you turn into someone like Hyacinth Coldwater. Be patient, be silent, be beautiful and untouched as an orchid, and then and only then will your reward come: a bell jar to keep you safe.

Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.

there’s no hell worse than a world in which I would see you grow old and lose you and then be forced to live another day.

No one has ever told me that I'm beautiful before," Hazel said. She hadn't realized it was true until she said it out loud. Jack stood with his hands on either side of her face and stared at her for a few heartbeats. Then he leaned in and softly kissed both her eyelids. "Someone should tell you that you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eighth of August, just because." He kissed her lips once more, gently, and then pulled away and gazed into her eyes. "Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.

Let him spend every night in the dirt if it meant getting his mornings with her.

What were miracles, but science that man didn't yet understand?

Dead bodies are never going to bite you. They're never going to do anything to you. It's living things that hurt you.

Mortui vivos docent; the dead teach the living.

Love is nothing but the prolonged agony of waiting for it to end. The fear of losing the ones we love makes us do selfish and foolish and cruel things. The only freedom is freedom from love, and once your love is gone, it can be perfect, crystallized in your memory forever.

Being a woman had closed many doors to Hazel Sinnett, but it had also revealed to her a valuable tool in her arsenal: women were almost entirely overlooked as people, which gave her the power of invisibility. People saw women, they saw the dresses women wore on public walks through the park, and the gloved hands they rested on their suitors’ elbows at the theater, but women were never threats.

She could say she had a headache. Or she was feeling faint. No one seemed to ask too many questions about a woman feeling faint, nor about the broader cultural phenomenon of an entire society of women who seemed to swoon en masse.

Every one of us deserves to die,' Dr. Beecham said. 'It is our only birthright.

Do not play games with your future. It permits the possibility of losing

His smiles felt like secrets shared from across the room every time.

I've taken you for a lot of things, but a fool was never one of them.

One book? One book? Now you’re being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? Or what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.” “Two books then, miss.

There's no hell worse than a world in which I would see you grow old and loose you and then be forced to live another day.

I used to be so confident. That’s the funny thing: I used to think that I knew everything, that I could do anything. And then you see it firsthand, and you realize how thin the line is between everything being all right and everything being ruined forever and you just become suddenly aware that you know nothing. I’m just a silly little girl playing dress-up and pretending.

Morte magis metuenda senectus. Do you know Latin, Miss Sinnett?” “Only some, I’m sorry to say. Is it—er—something like, ‘We fear old age—’?” “‘Old age should rather be feared than death.

We men fear death. Death! Gruesome and terrible! Inevitable and senseless! We dance towards her as we might a beautiful woman and Death waltzes back towards us, beckoning, always beckoning. Once the veil is pierced, we never return.

It would just mean another night at the kirkyard, and he would steal and sell a thousand bodies if it meant buying her the things that would show her how much he adored her. Let him spend every night in the dirt if it meant getting his mornings with her.

Dead bodies are never going to bite you. They’re never going to do anything to you. It’s living things that hurt you.