“Scent:
When she wore the hat, even many years later, she could always smell her mother's perfume & it was hard to remember she was supposed to be alone.”

“She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.”

“Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.”

“Her mother called to her. She said, "Where are you going, Flora Belle?"
Flora didn't answer her. She never answered her mother when she called her Flora Belle.
Sometimes she didn't answer her mother when she called her Flora either.”

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.”

“One young lady asserted that she had never looked at any of the cards in the cars in which she had been riding for years. When questioned further, it appeared that she knew by heart almost every advertisement appearing on the line (Chicago and Evanston line), and that the goods advertised had won her highest esteem. She was not aware of the fact that she had been studying the advertisements, and flatly resented the suggestion that she had been influenced by them. Some of the goods advertised were known to her only by these advertisements, yet she supposed that they had nothing to do with her esteem of the goods. She supposed that she had always known them, that they were used in her home, or that they had been recommended to her. She did not remember when she had first heard of them.”

“When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.”

“I remember, when we were still living in the Soviet Union, Mum would rush by like the wind in our apartment, covered with fur, or even running from one movie scene to the next, because she was a movie star there. Even if it was 40ºF outside, she always wore a miniskirt. For me, she was the most beautiful of all women.”

“Her early years were very unhappy, and she decided she would have a good time if she ever got a chance. Later on, she overdid it a little.”