“ My mother gave me a disappointed look. Then I gave her one back. Mine was for everything, not just the sandwich. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ They segued into a more general piece about AIDS. As usual, they started out with footage of some kind of sweaty nightclub in the city with a bunch of gay men dancing around in stupid leather outfits.… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ I told my mother he looked like a deflated balloon. Greta said he looked like a small gray moth wrapped in a spider's web. That's because everything about Greta is more beautiful, even the way she say… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ That's the secret. If you always make sure you're exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won't care if you die tomorrow. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ Things you'd never even seen with Finn could remind you of him, because he was the one person you'd want to show. "Look at that," you'd want to say, because you knew he would find a way to think it wa… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ But they gave me Finn. He said it like maybe it was worth the trade. Like it was something he would do again if he had the choice. Like he would take a man's legs and give away years of his own freedo… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ I dream about people who don't need to have sex to know they love each other. I dream about people who would only ever kiss you on the cheek. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ Then, who is Matilda?' I asked.Toby tilted his cup and poked at the slush with his straw. 'I suppose Matilda's the girl who felt like home. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Th… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn't lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.Then I… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ The day my mother gave us the keys, she also made me and Greta sign a form so that the bank knew our signatures. To get in we had to show our key and sign something so they would know it was really us… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ …there’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special, even though you know you’re not. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ There was a flicker of something in Greta's look. I couldn't tell whether it was a flicker of love or regret or meanness. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ ...I felt the wall between the world of secrets and the real world start to collapse. I felt the girls from the portrait becoming us and us becoming them... Carol Rifka Brunt
“ I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand. Carol Rifka Brunt
“ People didn’t know everything then. There were things people had never seen before. Places nobody had ever been. You could make up a story and people would believe it...also maybe it seems like it wou… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ If you close your eyes when you sing in Latin, and if you stand right at the back so you can keep one hand against the cold stone wall of the church, you can pretend you're in the Middle Ages. That's… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ When people mentioned it to me, they thought they were talking about some casual relative of mine. For most people that's what an uncle was. They had no idea how I felt about Finn. No idea that hearin… Carol Rifka Brunt
“ But you don't know what it was like. It was just the two of us that afternoon, and then . . . and then it was just me. Carol Rifka Brunt
