“[A]nother thing about myths: they gather in and circumscribe their target audience. They make a collection into a collective.”

“It's like the Vatican's porn collection," Zeb told her. "Safe in our hands.”

“More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.”

“Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run...”

“For these dances the boys send corsages, which I keep afterward and keep in my bureau drawer; squashed carnations and brown-edged rosebuds, wads of dead vegetation, like a collection of floral shrunken heads.”

“Another friend of mine used to maintain that airplanes stayed up in the air only because people believed—against reason—that they could fly: without that collective delusion sustaining them, they would instantly plummet to earth.”

“All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.”