“One's perception of time was relative to one's desire for its passage.”

“No one's making any decisions today," Mom translated. "It's late, and we're all tired and a little overwhelmed. Besides, Lucius, Jessica is not ready to contemplate marriage. She hasn't even kissed a boy yet, for goodness' sake." Lucius smirked at me, raising one eyebrow. "Really? No suitors? How shocking. I would have thought your pitchfork skills would be attractive to certain bachelors here in farm country.”

“One should never confuse fashionable with beautiful”

“Fear is the worst kind of grave, because it buries one alive.”

“Were you even aware that one could rent clothes, Vasile? Does it not seem a bit...cringe inducing?”

“December is celebrated quite heartily here in the United States. Aggresively, one might say. Every conceivable space is corseted with strands of twinkle lights, buildings are smothered beneath greenery, and a mass mania for erecting oversized, inflatable, waving "snowmen" in front of homes erupts amid the populace. It's quite a hysteria- and the evergreen trees are not just a myth, Vasile. People really do purchase them, in abundance. They are for sale everywhere. Imagine paying for the privilege of dragging a filthy piece of forest into your living area for the purpose of bedecking it with glass balls and staring at it.Why a tree? If one needed to display glass balls-and I highly discorage it-why not just a case of some sort? A rack?”

“It is strange how love is a source for power––can spur the desire to fight to the death, or to fight back from something that seems like death for long enough to write a coherent note––but also of weakness.”