“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting p...”

“This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something thats gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.”

“She can outstare anyone, and I am almost as good. Were impervious, we scintillate, we are thirteen. We wear long wool coats with tie belts, the collars turned up to look like those of movie stars, ...”

“In my dreams of this city I am always lost.”

“They are boiling with the pressured energy of explosive forces confined in a small space, and with the fervor of all religious movements in their early, purist stages. It is not enough to give lip ...”

“Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.”

“The fact is that I hate this city. I've hated it so long I can hardly remember feeling any other way about it.”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”