“She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.”

“She is written in a foreign tongue.”

“She was nervous about the future; it made her indelicate. She was one of the most unimportantly wicked women of her time --because she could not let her time alone, and yet could never be a part of it. She wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing. She had the fluency of tongue and action meted out by divine providence to those who cannot think for themselves. She was the master of the over-sweet phrase, the over-tight embrace.”

“It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.”

“Hold me? If you still want to, I mean." She looked away. "Everyday"--then he was there, lifting her into his arms, holding her like she was fragile and precious--"I want to hold you every day. Nothing will ever change that.”

“Her lips taste like mint from toothpaste or gum, or sometimes like cherries or grapes from her lip gloss. She's soft when I hold her, with curves where my hands rest, and when I touch her I think stupid caveman things like, mine and totally mine—oh yeah, and all mine.”