I am a master of foolhardy plans, I thought. I have so much practice I consider them professional risks.

He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn't ever quit.

Finally I went and found my hat and skewered it on my head with a four-inch hat pin. I wore the hat because I knew my mother never visited without one. The pin I thought would be a comfort in case of emergency.

"Who am I, that you should love me?" "You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth. "Do you believe me?" he asked. "Yes," she answered. "Do you love me?" "Yes." "I love you." And she believed him.

She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his.

I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again

I am a master of foolhardy plans, I thought. I have so much practice I consider them professional risks.