Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent." "Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But...she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to.

Evie wanted to cry. From fear. From exhaustion, yes. But mostly from the cruel uselessness, the damned stupid arbitrariness of it all.

Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?" "What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said. "Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.

Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's is watching them so they can be who they really are

No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.

She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.

Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala," I say with an affected bow.