“Mme. Padva greets them with the practiced disinterest she reserves for pretty young things.”

“Could you do such things when you were a dancer?' Tara asks her, as Tsukiko pulls a leg up impossibly far over her head.'I would have had a much busier social calendar if I could,' Mme. Padva replies with a shake of her head.”

“Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things. They wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference Adrienne thought, was that most young people seemed to thing that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed that they lay in the past.”

“She can have them, Mama," she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her.”

“It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.”

“How is your father?” she asks disinterestedly. “A contrivance,” I mutter. “A plot device.”