When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist. (Part 1, p. 5)

She hardly knew her parents; they died quickly as people did then, of whatever was in the air—pneumonia, diphtheria, tuberculosis. (Part 1, p. 6)

Canadians, do not vomit on me! (Part 1, p. 9)

While you are living, part of you has slipped away to the cemetery. (Part 1, p. 11)

Store clerks and waitresses are the heroines of my memories, those ladies cast off with children to raise; they keep things open, they keep things open, light up the night on Main Street, that paradisiacal center of towns then. (Part 1, pp. 11-12)

My mother's femaleness was absolute, ancient, and there was a peculiar, helpless assertiveness about it. (Part 2, p. 25)

The horses are led away to their rest, their feelings about the race they have run unknown to us. (Part 2, p. 27)

Secretive persons tend to generalized memories, discreet...