“Ironing's nice and simple,' he said. 'I get all tangled up in words when I'm putting together those interminable papers....”

“Then she broke down and cried onto the flowery wrapping paper. Melanie put her arms around the poor, thin body. What is Aunt Margaret made of? Birdbones and tissue paper. spun glass and straw.”

“Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why?Because, she said.You know that's no answer. You're spoiling your pretty looks, pet. Come here.She did not move. He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge and laughed.Come here, he said again, softly.So she went.”

“What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom. 'Do you want the truth?'She nodded.'The firing squad.''That's not the whole truth. Try again.''Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness.'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.'He was silent for several minutes.'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.''Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common?”

“I should have liked to have had him beside me in a glass coffin, so that I could watch him all the time and he would not have been able to get away from me.”

“I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, lay in this file. It was a very thin one.”

“What is Aunt Margaret made of? Bird bones and tissue paper, spun glass and straw.”