girls forbidden to dance would only attract husbands with bad complexions and sunken chests.

The time has to be right and the heart willing.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.

and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world

I don’t know what you’re feeling, I won’t even pretend

For the eternity that Lux Lisbon looked at him, Trip Fontaine looked back, and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life, still plagued him, even now in the desert, with his looks and health wasted. 'You never know what'll set the memory off,' he told us. 'A baby's face. A bell on a cat's collar. Anything.' They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen.