“She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.”

“She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.”

“She'd never felt about anyone the way she'd felt about him. Not even close. She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful.”

“She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.”

“She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.”

“She wasn't as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she'd slipped carefully, stealthily away from her ghosts.”