I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

You seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you.

Those of us with water in our personalities don't pick where we'll flow to. All we can do is flow where the landscape of our lives carries us

The corridor couldn't have smelled more strongly of fish guts if we had actually been inside a fish.

of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will.

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.