“Tasting what could have been—what should have been—didn't make it easier.”

“It's as if everything shifts around me, the pieces that didn't fit together finally twisting until they match. The terror that had been clouding and suffocating me begins to filter away, dissipating in the night. "I want something more too," I whisper. "I want more than looking back and wishing for what was or what could have been. Who I was or could have been. I want..." I lick my lips, tasting him. "I want you.”

“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.”

“I cried for what should have been.”

“Mary feels she should have been a boy and then everything would have been so much easier. She fights against her femininity in a way.”

“The whole bathhouse had been given over to laundry, which never struck Steffie as a good idea, what with who knows who having been in there after having been who knows where and having been in he didn't want to think what.”