“That's how it is for me, thinking about the future. Two different shapes. One holding time; the other escaping it. One suggesting fragility, confinement; the other, something transcendent. Turn it one way, you see an hourglass. Turn it the other way, and you see wings.”

“And even if she were, even if we had our answer, whatever it was, what would we do with it? How would we fit it into the shaped poem we try to assemble of our lives? Would we see an hourglass or wings?”

“As I was coming to see, life makes its own calendar, and if you're wise, that's the one you follow.”

“It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.”

“The seductive invitation of metamorphosis - of turning into something other — has continued to suffuse fantasies of identity; on the one hand holding out a way of escape from humanity, on the other annihilating the self.”

“You see, a conflict always begins with an issue - a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.”

“Her keeper jersey; she thinks of it now. The number 1 on its back. A lonely number. Only one goalkeeper on the field. Only one player who guards the net. Only one who stands strong and alone behind the other ten players on the field. No place to hide. No way to disappear.”