I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.

Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. ”I have come for the girl in the window,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears

Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention!

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

We all have someone we think shines so much more than we do that we are not even a moon to their sun, but a dead little rock floating in space next to their gold and their blaze.

Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.

It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.