“Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.”

“I didn't put in my diaphragm' I mumbled when we were through.You stirred, 'Is it dangerous?''It's very dangerous,' I said.Indeed, just about any stranger could have turned up nine months later. We might as well have left the door unlocked.”

“What did I expect, that you would wrap my rib cage with those enormous hands in which horses must be measured, lifting me overhead with the stern reproach that is every Western woman's sly delight, "You're too thin"?”

“A boy is a dangerous animal.”

“I see now what they mean by "holding your head high," and I am sometimes surprised by how much interior transformation a ramrod posture can afford. When I stand physically proud, I feel a small measure less mortified.”

“But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity was not so very different from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the rules.”

“Later you referenced that anecdote to illustrate that my expectations were always preposterously outsized; that my very ravenousness for the exotic was self-destructive, because as soon as I seized upon the otherworldly, it joined this world and didn't count.”