“Monotonous and thankless as her job can be sometimes, she cheers at the thought of her coworkers - a dozen of them crammed into their little offices in the basement - all cleverly disguised as harmless geeks, all capable of saving the world if called upon.”

“She wants him to want to be looking at her.”

“The early morning sunlight warms a patch of linoleum, and she lets her feet bathe in it while the kettle heats on the stove.”

“Her sister read that spiders have book lungs, which fold in and out over themselves like pages. This pleased Isabel immensely. When she learned later that humans do not also have book lungs, she was disappointed. Book lungs. It made complete sense to her. This way breath, this way life: through here.”

“It's a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated.”

“They are in the middle of the sidewalk, face to face, between a tobacco shop and a trash can. Everything they’ve never said flows into the narrow space between them.”

“You've been here before, Bell. Remember the stories you told me about wandering in the woods when you were a little girl? It scared the crap out of you, but you went out there all alone, knee-high to a bunny rabbit, and picked berries and climbed trees and found bird nests and came home all bug-bitten and mossy. And you loved every minute of it. It made you our beautiful Arctic Bell, impervious to cold and feared by mosquitoes. Aren't you glad you didn't stay by grandma's side, darning socks and baking gingerbread?Who darns socks?Girls nobody tells stories about.”