“And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.”

“...when all the time it was that grand tree, taking up half the garden with its roots and not allowing anything else to grow.”

“Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.”

“Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.”

“But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?”

“That girl,' tutted Alsana as her front door slammed, 'swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time.”

“Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.”