“Spicy food and I have a close relationship—an obsessive one, in fact. If it’s spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain . . . which, now that I put it that way, seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive. That’s a known fact of science.”

“You want to go back to my house the long way?" he asked."Or the shortcut? You have to be cold-""Long way," I replied. "The long way, for sure.”

“Can I tell you something you really don't want to hear? He's going to break up with you. - Stuart”

“I remember how, at first, I had felt the tension in his lips, as if he was trying to make a barrier between us - then they had relaxed, parted slightly. And that's when I had known he wanted to kiss me, wanted to give in. That little parting of the lips, the little sigh that came out... I would hear that sigh forever. That little, little sound when the whole world seemed to open up.”

“I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy." I had been tracked, like a bear. "Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said. "I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops." A really inept bear.”

“It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.”

“The day was ridiculous.In fact, the situation was so serious I thought they had to be joking - like maybe they staged a special first day to psych people out. I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths." It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance.”