Grief wrapped around her, eating at her heart. The house was full of chairs but she could not bear to sit upright.

Her own misery filled her heart — there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.

Her somewhat overly round head was wedged deep within her shoulders on a short body; it sat right upon it, as though there had never been such a thing as a neck, what a superfluous contraption.

Her grief grieved her. His devastated her.

She wanted — what some people want throughout life — a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.

She was brave from excess of grief

…nothing remained but loneliness and grief…

She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.

But hers was a strange heart, sad in its very nature, and she could never weep and ease it as other women do, for her tears never brought her comfort.

…the pain of neuralgia…she knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn't feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.

Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content.

It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering.

Spent, she thought that there was no place as unknown as grief. (p38)