“If only feelings and ideas and stories and history really could be contained in a block of marble—if only there could be a gathering up of permanence—how reassuring it would be, how comforting to think that something you loved could be held in place, moored and everlasting, rather than bobbing along on the slippery sea of reminiscence, where it could always drift out of reach.”

“It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?”

“How great it would be if our bad memories could be stored in our skin rather than our brains, and we could lather than up, scrubbing incessantly until they sloughed off the surface, gathering at the drain of the tun, completely washed away.”

“You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel.”

“I am angry at this moment, angry at both of them for electing to walk about hurt and silent rather than having it all out, out in the open where we could deal with it-and angry that I was shut out of it, as if I could only be a little victim and not a full person with ideas and support and love to give.”

“All those stories about time travel, they were comforting, and at the same time it bothered me how they always made it seem fun and how everything fit into place, how things could only ever be how they were supposed to be, how the heroes found a way to change the world while still obeying the laws of physics.”