...the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her.

Cats and ghosts both partook of the saucers of milk and that was okay. They consumed different parts of it: the cats its substance, the ghosts its essence, and none went to waste.

It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.

Infinities are not for casual exploration. You could fall and keep falling. You could get lost.

I've always imagined that one day the path of your life would unroll at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today.

There are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird flu. There are a lot more bird-flu boys at large.

...and she felt the words come from some iron place within her that hadn't existed an hour ago. She didn't speak loudly, but there was such a change in her voice. Coming from that iron place, it was heavy and true; it wasn't persuasive, or desperate, or antagonistic. It just was.