“The journal and Gansey were clearly long acquainted, and he wanted her to know. This is me. The real me.”

“Afterward I always kiss her, my baby, and look into her clear eyes that know everything about me, and want me to be her daddy anyway.”

“He stares at me steadily, for a long moment before looking away, but I read his eyes clearly. He wants me tonight. And from what my eyes were saying back to him, I think I just said yes.”

“Maybe they were. I don't know. Maybe theyweren't. But they felt like the real thing, and the real thing wanted to make money off me.”

“The emperor beckons me; he wants me to marry his daughter.The road to the capital is long and distant; I don't want her.”

“I wondered if this longing in a three-year-old had sparked what came at eight. That fuzzy feeling of difference, that her crushes on female teachers or her cousin were more real than the other girls' crushes. Hers contained a desire beyond sweetness and attention, it fed a longing, beginning to flower green and yellow into a crocuslike lust, the soft petals opening into her awkward adolescence. It was not so much, she would write in her journal, that she wanted to have sex with women, but that she wanted to disappear inside of them forever. To hide.”