“We sat in silence for so long that I wondered if Nathan had evil twin who kept charming me.”

“Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story's silent twin. There are so many things we can't say, because they are too painful. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.”

“The Evil Twin was either Tracey or Casey Reardon. I wasn't sure which one, and no one else seemed to either. All we knew for sure was that the twins were evil. Or, one of them was evil and the other just looked the same.”

“[…] there come moments when we know we are no more and no less than waves and snowflakes, or than that which surely feels, now and then, from its so wonderfully charming confinement, the pull of longing: the leaf.”

“The feeling of pleasure was like nothing I had ever felt before and I wanted his hands to feel me all over as he sat there groping me and I was left wondering was it him or the drug making me feel so good?”

“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”