Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

September could see it. She did not know what is was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark.

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

The future is a messy, motley business, little girl.

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.