“She just dropped it and ran!!”

“Tina dropped her eyes. She hated this feeling. She wished she could tell the woman that her life hadn’t always been governed by this desperation. Once she had been a nice girl from the suburbs whose mother dropped her at the shops with friends and simply handed her twenty dollars for lunch. Once she had bought new clothes and seen the dentist every six months. Once she had thought that anyone living on the streets was obviously not trying hard enough. But once was a long time ago and the energy to try sometimes just ran out.”

“Maybe she'd just say she ran into a door; that seemed infinitely more plausible than the truth.”

“There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.”

“Zahara didn’t respond, she just ran, knowing if she turned around she might be as likely to kiss him as she would be to grab the dagger and ram it into his mouth.”

“And there was nothing you could do about a woman like that. She just turned herself into a hammer and you ran right into her.”