“But she had felt since childhod that her life would n ot be ordinary. A moment would come- she would know it when she saw it- and everything would change.”

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

“All day she had been dreaming of the comet, its wild and fiery beauty, what it might mean, how her life might change.”

“She saw herself moving through another life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life.”

“So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.”

“I imagine that she flushes, seeing him there, for she is at that age when even the most commonplace boys take on a sense of mystery. And this boy is not ordinary. He is wild and he has strange and fanciful perceptions. [p. 153]”

“She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.”