“Seven times I have despised my soul:The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height.The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled.The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy.The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong.The fifth time when she forbode for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength.The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.”

“Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.”

“That's when I started thinking about my sister.I thought about the time when she and her friends painted my fingernails, and how that was okay because my brother wasn't there. And the time she let me use her dolls to make up plays or let me watch whatever I wanted to watch on TV. And when she started becoming a "young lady," and no one was allowed to look at her because she thought she was fat. And how she really wasn't fat. And how she was actually very pretty. And how different her face looked when she realized boys thought she was pretty. And how different her face looked the first time she really like a boy who was not on a poster on her wall. And how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy. And then I wondered how her face would look when she came out from behind those doors.”

“She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

“Songs to Herself:She waved at all the people on the trains & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

“She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.”