‘Meanwhile the dark slid itself onto her chest like a snake, organizing its weight into neatly stacked coils that might go on forever and bury her, crush her, if she didn’t leap out of bed just in time and, with deft skill, reopen the door’

‘The sun was still submerged in the wintry murk of dawn when Ba, Dadaji, and their daughter, Mina Foi, emerged upon the veranda to sip their tea’

‘Something uncoiled in my stomach, slow and languorous, and I decided it would be better if I left now, and did not go in to him’

‘What we obviously had, even when things smoothed over, was a C-minus marriage, which makes it pretty hard to score much higher than a B overall on the rest of your life’

‘He sometimes thought she was the kind of person who might choose to bring the house down simply to find out what kind of noise it made’

‘He tries to work out if his friend is telling the truth or if he’s lying. Though he would prefer him to be lying, he thinks that he’s probably telling the truth’

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