“To tell the truth, she didn't want to; she liked the constancy of preoccupation.”

“She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.”

“If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.”

“When Constance was born, Aunt Glo named her after the dormitory she lived in at college: Constance Hall.”

“It was like digging for gold in a garbage pile. And if that little analogy didn't tell her something, she didn't know what could.”

“The other girls in the village never felt restless. Nhamo was like a pot of boiling water. 'I want...I want...,' she whispered to herself, but she didn't know what she wanted and she had no idea how to find it. ”