“She drowned in words that could not teach her how to swim.”

“In a great gasp, puts her head in her hands again and cries as if her throat were a cave, as if the howling winds came from her belly, she cries like a storm that will never end.”

“It's strange how men feel they have the right to criticize a woman's appearance to her face.”

“Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.”

“There was no justice, there was only life. And life she had.”

“But she continued to wonder what the fish tasted like, so brilliant and vivid pink. Would it taste pink?”

“What is a man, anyway? Everything I see around me in popular culture tells me a man is he who screws and kills. But everything I see around me in life tells me a man is he who makes money.”