“no reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. and from love, too.”

“Aphrodite put off her famous belt, in which all the charms of love are woven, potency, desire, lovely whispers, and the force of seduction, which takes away foresight and judgment even from the most reasonable people.”

“My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over the failure to find a love none of us could ever be. In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.”

“The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.”

“The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.”

“Dr. Phil never talked about Smyrna and left the room if anyone did. He never mentioned his murdered sons and daughters. Maybe this was the reason for his survival.”