“Caz doesn’t like ‘nearness’. It makes her extremely irascible. In a three-bedroom council house with seven people in it, she is almost perpetually furious.”

“There was nothing mean about his voice. In fact it was almost too nice. Like she was too dim to grasp whatever was so obvious to him. Which made her absolutely furious.”

“You’re like seven feet tall, aren’t you?”“I am not seven feet tall,” he snapped at her as if she’d really insulted him. “I’m six-eleven.” When she smirked in disbelief, he added, “And three-quarters.”

“The soprano studies for seven years in order to be able to open her mouth and make loud sounds for three hours on end.”

“Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.”

“At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.”