“What else is she like?”

“Now she is like everyone else.”

“Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.”

“She is fine. She hates us both but it really didn't sound like anything else was wrong”

“She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.”

“Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes.”

“She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.”

“She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else”

“Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears.”

“She had lovers and, if the secret must be out, she drank. What else accounts for the naughtiness of her eyes? Like so many tawaifs (geishas, courtesans) there were ups and downs in her childhood, the father leaving the mother and so on, but she was blessed with the divine gift and her art transcended the various accidents of her life. In the end all else was forgotten. Only the legend and the accomplishment survive.”