“The air between them began to settle into a silence. Awkward, yet softly exciting. Like an unexpected snow day.”

“What did you say to me Itsy? The day when you broke your silence?"Itsy shrugged and shuffled back into her own apartment.”

“She remembered reading somewhere that Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. Eleanor wished there were a hundred ways to say her name. She thought, maybe, if her name was howled from all corners of the world, in a million different voices, that she might explode into a cloud of snow. Light and separate, her parts floating down onto the world in a series of beautiful crystalline moments.”

“Spring came slowly to the Bronx with a lot of rain & soft water-color tree blossoms.”

“I can still feel them there. His lips on mine. His words in my ear that day."Itsy, say you'll be my girl. My secret. Oh, please say it.”

“A game like sardines is scary, not so much for the hider but for the seekers. It's scary because you lose your companions and the whole world creeps up quiet and you slowly realize you're going to stumble upon a secret place where everyone will jump out at you. And then, when you are the very last seeker, you start to wonder if you're the only person in the world. If the hiding place somehow sucked up the players and the last one has to decide to run away or get sucked up, too.”

“Here's a secret to love," she said. "Always make sure that the man loves you just a breath more than you love him.""Oh Mimi, I love your Papa more than any woman ever loved any man. And still, he loves me a breath more. It's the only healthy way. If a woman loves too much- if her love is heavier- she won't see anything but him. She'll be blind to the world. Women are made like that. We have to teach ourselves not to become obsessed. True love lies in peace, not torture.”