“Travel is sold as freedom, but we were about as free as lab rats. This is how they'll manage the next Holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they'll simply issue us with air tickets and we'll do whatever we're told”

“When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said: 'We're afraid they'll kill us.' When men were asked the same question about women, they said: 'we're afraid they'll laugh at us.”

“My Dad says that we're the meanest to the ones we love because we know they'll still love us.”

“I can't help it either, the laughing: solemn gatherings, slowballads, pompous orations, any person or occasion that assumes I'lloffer my unreserved respect: I tend to find them all hysterical in theend. Especially if someone similar is there to set me off. They don'thave to do much: I recognize what it looks like when somebody'scomposure starts to strip itself away. They'll maybe cross their armswith that twitchy, shaky, tension, or they'll grab down little wheezesof embarrassed air, or they'll simply hood their faces under theirpalm, trying to hide how fast they're slipping, how fast *we're*slipping, because I'll be weakening with them by then, I'll be just aslost, pulled equally tight against the moment when we both stop caringand let it disgrace us -- when we laugh.”

“Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.”

“So, what do you think they'll do to him?" I ask. Prim sounds about a thousand years old when she speaks. "Whatever it takes to break you.”