“The opera-glasses she stole from the bookcase so that each morning she could look through them down into the street in order to make people bigger and bring them close to her in order to feel less lonely.”

“In the pool halls, the hustlers and the losers
I used to watch 'em through the glass.
Well I'd stand outside at closing time
Just to watch her walk on past.
Unlike all the other ladies, she looked so young and sweet.
As she made her way alone down that empty street.
Down on Mainstreet.”

“Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security.”

“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.”

“He says he’s lonely, horribly lonely because of this love he feels for her. She says she’s lonely too. She doesn’t say why.”

“She loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It differentiated her from the others”

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”

“The candlelight dances off her mahogany-coloured skin as she un-robes, and she is smiling from the very middle of herself, and you look at them and you think "This is the one, this is it" and then—and then the cage comes down!”

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

“She feels lonely all the time, she wants to be accepted, by anyone, on any terms, but she feels apart. As if nobody who really got to know her would trust her.”