"Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head."
Maryna struggles to understand and love herself, but she knows that she's worth understanding. Through this metaphor of the room inside her head, she learns to let her thoughts and emotions settle before pursuing action. She participates in a kind of meditation in order to allow her inner self to communicate with her.
"But the past is the biggest country of all, and there's a reason one gives in to the desire to set stories in the past: almost everything good seems located in the past, perhaps that's an illusion, but I feel nostalgic for every era before I was born. . ."
Maryna is a creature of feelings and intuition. She appreciates nostalgia for its artistic value, but sometimes she allows her romanticized relationship to the past to rob her present moment. The expansiveness with which she describes the past, reveals Maryna's pre-disposition to feel sorry for herself. If the past has so many possibilities, then she is allowed to stay focused retroactively and thus avoid thinking about the future.
". . .Cashmere robe of peach-blossom pink, trimmed with a cascade of lace down the front and one narrow flounce around the bottom, lace ruffles on the elbow sleeves, a lace fraise at the neck and one shell-shaped lace pocket on the left side ornamented with a pink rosette."
Maryna's dress for the party at the novel's beginning is elaborate. This description reflects Sontag's own affinity for photography and consequent eye for details. She sees her novels as much as thinks them.
"I thought if I listened and watched and ruminated, taking as much time as I needed, I could understand the people in this room, that theirs would be a story that would speak to me, though how I knew this I can't explain."
Maryna has trouble connecting with people, often getting trapped in her own mind. She pretends that people can be understood from their exteriors, but she neglects to inquire about their interior lives and consequently misses their real identities. Although she knows that she's missing something essential in her relationships, Maryna continues to ponder this from the outside looking in, quite literally.
