Clare seems so pleased with the idea of me as a pirate that she forgets that I am Stranger Danger.

Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too."

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

I think play must have been invented so we wouldn't go mad thinking about certain things.

I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.

When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.

Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me, that Henry could win the lottery at any time at all; that he has never bothered to do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate. "Clare? Earth to Clare..." "Thank you," I say, too abruptly.