“She would be trouble, this one; the fact that he was lying awake now was proof of that.”

“The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be one for her as well that she belonged to him: one can only give what belongs to you.”

“There was a certain bitter humor to lying awake wishing for something one cannot have, after lying awake not so long ago wishing for the opposite thing that one had just lost. Not a very useful sort of adaptability, this, she thought.”

“Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves.”

“She would lie awake,Every night I’d hear her cryHer mind in slow decay,I guess she couldn’t take goodbye”

“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”