She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.

Sometimes you need to make a mess. -Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper

Gestating characters feels something like the mental equivalent of gestating a baby. In both cases, to create them you lose yourself. Or at least you reshape yourself to encompass them.

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.

It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal.

Something about giving in without a fight felt wrong.

She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.