“Relax, Stranger. Things are not as they seem.”

“Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull”

“When it seems like the sky is about to collapse, relax, that’s just the roof caving in.”

“Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.”

“Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.”

“Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.”