“At twenty-four she imagined with dread that she was growing old.”

“So Old Man Date Rape was number what?" she asks. "Four or five?""We're not counting him," I say. "This is the Twenty Boy Summer, not the Twenty Dirty Old Man Summer.”

“We need to talk." she says."The four most dreaded words in the history of marriage.”

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”

“Madrére Sybille, an elder of the Sistéria, is speaking to twenty-four year old Sistére Graice:Sybille – I won’t lecture you but twenty-four is still young. Age brings experience and . . Graice – And wisdom? That’s just what old people say.”

“What made more sense was that the bargain she was bound to was to go on living as she had been doing. The bargain was already in force. Days and years and feelings much the same, except that the children would grow up, and there might be one or two more of them and they too would grow up, and she and Brendan would grow older and then old.It was not until now, not until this moment, that she had seen so clearly that she was counting on something happening, something which would change her life. She had accepted her marriage as one big change, but not as the last one. So, nothing now but what she or anybody else could sensibly foresee. That was to be her happiness, that was what she had bargained for, nothing secret, or strange.Pay attention to this, she thought. She had a dramatic notion of getting down on her knees. This is serious...It was a long time ago that this happened. In North Vancouver, when they lived in the Post and Beam house. When she was twenty-four years old and new to bargaining.”