“The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude—a gray spread of cotton that deemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way.”

“She found it sinful and expensive to have sugar in her tea, although she herself never spent a penny on anything.”

“Adrian had always found it amusing that a guy could be drilling Stacia up her ass while she considered herself to be a virgin. Her intent had been to present herself as such when she found "Mr. Right.”

“Even as we grew up, my mother could not help imposing herself between her children and whatever it was they might take it in mind to reach out for in the world. For she would get it for them, if it was good enough for them--she would have to be very sure--and give it to them, at whatever cost to herself: valiance was in her very fibre. She stood always prepared in herself to challenge the world in our place. She did indeed tend to make the world look dangerous, and so it had been to her. A way had to be found around her love sometimes, without challenging that, and at the same time cherishing it in its unassailable strength. Each of us children did, sooner or later, in part at least, solve this in a different, respectful, complicated way.”

“If everything were anything," Chance said softly, "the barriers would break down, and we'd all lose ourselves to chaos. And then there would be no cotton candy.”

“What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.”