I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room

that's what I love you for: your inability to perceive all my hideous flaws

You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by.

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

Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning.