“It could be Paris. It could be Rio de Janeiro. It could be anywhere but home: someplace, anyplace, disorienting enough to make him notice what he wouldn’t otherwise see. (The medicinal benefits of disorientation can never be overestimated.)”

“When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.”

“She knew enough to recognize that memories were crowding in, and there was nothing he could do. They wouldn’t let him speak. She would never know what scenes were driving that turmoil.”

“He wished he could be anywhere else and anyone else but Here and Him.”

“Balsa seemed invincible, endowed with powers no other warrior could match, but in her profile he could glimpse the shadow of a young girl, hurt and buffeted by a cruel and hopeless fate. If he had never experienced what it was like to be at the mercy of fate himself, he would not have noticed, but now he could see it with unbearable, heartrending clarity.”

“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”