“He had a supernatural grin.”

“He says, "But, hey, wouldn't it be weird-if Bennu wakes up from the operation, and he's all tall and stuff, and then he doesn't recognize himself in the mirror?”

“All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell," he says, and he is talking as if he is talking only to me. "Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.”

“Because there is a need to hear one story and to tell another.”

“In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more.”

“It occurred to me that a lot of beauty has to do with believing it yourself. That half of what we see is just the way it is presented.”

“Old elbows," she told me. "A woman's elbows always give her age away.”