"“It had also once been the place where you sounded like your-self. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other, through some erosion of wind or water on a self not nearly as firm as stone.�

�<�> while looking back with tremendous pity to women of the past in their whalebones; that you took the longest strides your body was capable of, while women of the past limped forward on broken arches.�"