Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?

Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.

It was a pleasure, Enna, Finn, tree rat." "Did she just call you tree rat?

She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.

We know it's all just daydreaming...But sometimes, it'd be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth.

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.

And Isi always listened, never told Enna she had been foolish, never said hollow things like 'You'll be all right.' . . . Isi saw Enna's struggle and her sadness, and she understood.