“Manto's take on Ismat:"Ismat’s pen and tongue both run fast. When she starts writing, her ideas race ahead and the words cannot catch up with them. When she speaks, her words seem to tumble over one another. If sheenters the kitchen to show her culinary skill, everything will be in a mess. Being hasty by nature, she would conjure up the cooked roti in her mind even before she had finished kneading the dough. The potatoes would note yet be peeled although she would have already finished making the curry in her imagination. I feel sometimes she may just go into the kitchen andcome out again afer being satiated by her imagination.”

“[...] And before she knew it the word was on her lips, lips being bitten and nibbled by his. “Pill,” she burst out on a breath. “I’m on the—”He was inside her before she could finish the sentence. Inside her, stretching her. Pumping into her, one hand yanking her leg up around his hip, squeezing her arse, the other cupping and kneading her breast, pinching her nipple.”

“When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.”

“Friends and family came and went, sometimes helping her with her tears, other times making her laugh. But even in her laughter there was something missing. She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live. But what was the point in living when there was no life in it? These questions went through her mind over and over until she reached the point of not wanting to wake up from her dreams--they were what felt real.Deep down, she knew it was normal to feel like this, she didn't particularly think she was losing her mind. She knew that one day she would be happy again and that this feeling would just be a distant memory. It was getting to that day that was the hard part.”

“He turned. "She would never marry for wordly advantage.""Yet when she experiences the consequence she gains in such a marriage, she will feel compensated for giving up her freedom!""Her freedom!""I think her much at liberty.”

“The point is, did she kill that woman? If I thought she did I would bow out quick — I would already have bowed out because it would have been hopeless. But she didn’t One will get you ten that she didn’t. If she had—”The interruption wasn’t words; it was her lips against mine and her palms covering my ears. If she had been Wolfe’s client I would have shoved her off quick, since that sort of demonstration only ruffles him, but she was mine and there was no point in hurting her feelings. I even patted her shoulder. When she was through I resumed.”