“...she opened the door very slowly and carefully, half hiding behind it, as if badly frightened of what might be waiting for her on the other side. And considering that it was me waiting, this showed rare common sense.”

“Nice to know a few things aren't in the government's files,' he said, opening the front door and stepping out ahead of her. The human courtesy of waiting for the woman to go through a door was all flourish, no sense. If any danger waited on the other side of a door, he'd rather meet it himself, not send her into it.”

“Some other passenger pulled the stop cord. I stood, waiting behind her at the center door, looking up at my smile in the tilt of circular mirror that hung lazy, like it was asleep, half dreaming me.”

“She waited the eternal instant that women wait when a horror jumps out at them. It is an instant that men do not use for waiting, an instant that opens a door to life or death. Women look through the opening because something might be alive in there.”

“But just as she turns to walk away she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish."Wait," he says, and so she does.”

“Her curiosity was too much for her. She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before.”