“I could have thought up a lot of things, but many great people had to go and live before me. They might have stole my thunder, but I’ve got a tight hold on the lightning.”

“I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for....”

“I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business?”

“[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do...”

“I changed my mind. Maybe I do want a black hole for a vagina. How bad could it be? I wouldn't need to carry a purse anymore. I could just shove things up my twat. 'Oh, you need a pen? Hold on, let me check in my vagina. What's that you say? Do I have a flashlight? Let me stick my hand up my vag and find out.' Let's go home. We could do a home birth in the bathtub. It might be a tight squeeze but I bet we could both fit in there.”

“And it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns... that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale... that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorientate myself. p.71”