“Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart butold enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.”

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

“I'm looking for a writer who doesn't know where the sentence is leading her; a writer who starts with her obsessions and whose heart is bursting with love, a writer sly enough to give the slip to her secret police, the ones who know her so well, the ones with the power to accuse and condemn in the blink of an eye. It's all right that she doesn't know what she's thinking until she writes it, as if the words already exist somewhere and draw her to them. She may not know how she got there, but she knows when she's arrived.”

“She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.”

“This was it. Kiyomi realized it now. This was what her heart had reacted to. Her heart thrilled to mitochondria.But why?”

“Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.”