Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.

They thought depression was like bieng 'depressed'. They thought it was like being in a bad mood, only worse. Therefore, they tried to get him to snap out of it.

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.