Chapter 2

• 'They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.'
• 'A relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space' ... 'like a place in a face where the eye has been taken out'
• 'A return to traditional values.'
• 'Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?'
• 'a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolour. Flowers are still allowed'
• Like other things now, thought must be rationed.'
• 'But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe.
• 'Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.'
• 'Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us.' ....... 'A sister dipped in blood'
• 'The door of the room - not my room, i refuse to say my -'
• 'one hand on the banister, once a tree'
• 'runner down the centre, dusty pink. Like a path through the forest, like a carpet for royalty, it shows me the way.'
• 'round, convex, a pier glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something'
• 'I heard Rita say to Cora that she wouldn't debase herself like that'
• 'Go to the colonies, Rita said. They have the choice.'
• 'Their faces were the way women's faces are when they've been talking about you behind your back and they think you've heard: embarrassed, but also a little defiant, as if it were their right.'
• Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that.
• 'I don't smile. Why tempt her to friendship?
• ' I hunger to commit the act of touch