“Violet carved her hate into her flesh one name at a time.”
“If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.”
“]sing to usthe one with violets in her lap]mostly]goes astray”
“She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name...”
“Her amethysts lay upon her skin like sugared violets on cream.”
“I love her and hate her at the same time. I even love the parts of her that I hate, her vitality and her colour, her disruption and disorder, her humour and her despair, her conceit and her narcissism, her everything that isn't me.”