“A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”

“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”

“She walks towards Karen and Karen feels a cool wind against her skin, and the grandmother holds out both of her knobby old hands, and Karen puts out her own hands and touches her, and her hands feel as if sand is falling over them. There's a smell of milkweed flowers and garden soil. The grandmother keeps on walking; her eyes are light blue, and her cheek comes against Karen's, cool grains of dry rice. Then she's like the dots on the comic page, close up, and then she's only a swirl in the air, and then she's gone.”

“Only a girl like thiscan know what's happened to you.If she were here she wouldreach out her arms towardsyou now, and touch youwith her absent handsand you would feel nothing, but you would betouched all the same.”

“Perhaps her mind is slipping, perhaps she's going off the tracks, perhaps she is coming unhinged. Unhinged, like a broken door, like a rammed gate, like a rusting strongbox. When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside and other things get in that ought to be shut out." ~~Margaret Atwood”

“Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.”

“He's got his cigarette going. He offers her one; this time she takes it. Brief match-flare insider their cupped hands. Red finger-ends.She thinks, Any more flame and we'd see the bones. It's like X-rays. We're just a kind of haze, just coloured water. Water does what it likes. It always goes downhill.”