‘Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get.’

‘How I loved to wring myself out that way, stoking my feelings until they were unbearable.’

‘I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself.’

‘But even then, even with my wrist swelling and a cuff of trapped blood, I insisted I was fine, that it was nothing, and my parents believed me right up until the doctor showed them the x-ray, the bones snapped clean.’

‘He was just a man, sensitive to spice foods, guessing at his foreign markets. Plugging away at his French.’