She felt the essence of herself pulled finer and smaller like those streams of spun glass that pull and stretch till there remains but a glimmering illusion. Neither falling nor breaking, the stream spins finer. She felt herself very small and ecstatic. Alabama was in love.

I am really only myself when I'm somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.

It seemed to Alabama that, reaching her goal, she would drive the devils that had driven her - that, in proving herself, she would achieve that peace which she imagined went only in surety of one’s self - that she would be able, through the medium of the dance, to command her emotions, to summon love or pity or happiness at will, having provided a channel through which they might flow. She drove herself mercilessly, and the summer dragged on.

Oh, we are going to be so happy away from all the things that almost got us but couldn't quite because we were too smart for them!

I believed I was a salamander, and it seems I am nothing but an impediment.

Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.

They hadn't much faith in travel, nor a great belief in a change of scene as a panacea for spiritual ills; they were simply glad to be going.