“I would like to know just what kind of nothing I am”

“There are long stretches of time when I don't know what I am doing,or what I have done - nothing mostly, but sometimesit would be nice to know what kind of nothing that was...”

“Are you coming down with something?" Mom asks.And just for the tiniest of seconds, I wonder what would happen if I told them the truth. That school is nothing like I imagined it would be. That I'm not the girl in the catalog at all. I'm not a Happy College Student. I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.”

“Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.”

“I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.”

“You're right. I'm not the kind of woman to do something foolish out of defiance. I am, however, the kind of woman who would do something just to prove that you can't tell me what kind of woman I am.”