“She didn't say goodbye. She set off up the street, dodging the pedestrians, walking fast. He watched her, waiting to see if she might look back. But of course she didn't. He knew she wouldn't. She wasn't the looking-back kind.”

“She had the resigned indifference of extreme old age. Buildings and empires rose and fell. It snowed. It stopped snowing. People came and went. One day death would come for her, and she would not find that surprising either, and she would not care -”

“Right, you see that girl over there, the one in that group that keeps looking right at you?'...'Right, let's say I'm convinced she's wearing black knickers - she looks like a black knickers kind of gal to me - and I'm so sure that's what she's wearing, so positive of that sartorial fact, I want to bet a million dollars on it. The trouble is, if I'm wrong, I'm wiped out. So I also bet she's wearing knickers that aren't black, but are any one of a whole basket of colours - let's say I put nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars on that possibility: that's the rest of the market; that's the hedge. This is a crude example, okay, in every sense, but hear me out. Now if I'm right, I make fifty K, but even if I'm wrong I'm going to lose fifty K, because I'm hedged. And because ninety-five per cent of my million dollars is not in use - I'm never going to be called on to show it: the only risk is in the spread - I can make similar bets with other people. Or I can bet it on something else entirely. And the beauty of it is I don't have to be right all the time - if I can just get the colour of her underwear right fifty-five per cent of the time I'm going to wind up very rich...”

“In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?”

“She was the only one left, and she was real.To be the only one, and to know that you are real - that's sanity, isn't it?But just to be on the safe side, maybe it was best to keep pretending that one was a stuffed figure. Not to move. Never to move. Just to sit here in the tiny room, forever and ever.If she sat there without moving, they wouldn't punish her.If she sat there without moving, they'd know that she was sane, sane, sane.She sat there for quite a long time, and then a fly came buzzing through the bars.It lighted on her hand.If she wanted to, she could reach out and swat the fly.But she didn't swat it.She didn't swat it, and she hoped they were watching, because that proved what sort of a person she really was.Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...”

“Maybe she was being so hoity-toity because she didn't have her own fairy godmother.”

“She won't win," Eric said. He sounded confident, passionate--everything I might have hoped would be reassuring."You're sure?" I asked."Yes, my lover. I'm sure.""But you're not here," I observed, and I hung up very gently. He didn't call back.”