It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.

Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.

Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.

The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.

Become such as you are, having learned what that is.