“Her ankles were wobbling in her tall black pumps, and I saw that it could not be an easy thing to be a drunken transvestite.”

“He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.”

“Annabeth sat up and glared at her ankle.
"You HAD to break," she scolded it.
The ankle did not reply.”

“Tall, aren't you?" she said.
"I didn't mean to be."
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.”

“When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.”

“And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind of world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”

“She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.”

“Daydreams were dangerous because they made her wish for things she could never have.”

“I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly,
When my hand
Touched her cold and long fingers
Which was from the family of the wailing reed
It gripped an eternal grief in its fist
The pen broke
And pain
Like black drops of ink
dropped on our papery hearts.
I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly;”

“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”