“My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable force that might, at any moment, break loose, and do something terrible. [Burnside, p. 27]”

“He lied all the time even when there was no need to lie [...] He needed a _history_, a sense of self. [Burnside on his father, p. 22]”

“Lots of men think that women should tell the truth, explain their feelings. These men should use their wishes more wisely. (Prepare To Die!, p.27)”

“You ever get the feeling all hell’s about to break loose and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

“There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West”

“She has known some happiness there, a privileged moment of revelation, a glimpse into an unexplored part of herself, into something beyond herself. But she is also suspicious of such moment; they do not last, and one never knows where and when they might recur, like islands of an uncharted archipelago. p 108”