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A big reason that we believe women are "worse" at strength is the fact that "strength" is defined by what men do well, or are cultured to do well, versus what women can do better if given the chance.

'The so-called dominant classes . . . especially those like my friends and myself, richer in fancy degrees than in actual dollars—tend to express dominance through strenuous aerobic sports that display moral character, self-control, and self-development, rather than physical dominance.'

Instead of lurching over and bending at the waist to pick something up from the ground, suddenly I was squatting down without even noticing. Deftly pouring the cat litter was one thing, but it wasn't long before I could contort my body close to the giant 40-pound box of litter, wrapping myself around it between my spring-loaded legs, and pick it up without dragging on my lower back muscles.

...what calories did; where my muscle was, how much of it I had; even what the point of exercise was. My unified theory of how these things fit together had never stuck. But there were dark matters and energies I had yet to discover that had pushed and pulled and dragged me around, manipulating the relationships between all of these things, impossible to see but whose effects were undeniable.

When I arrived, they brought me tea in a Chinese padded basket, and little cakes. I have never been so grateful for anything.

The skirting board was chipped. While having sex, I noted that, as the hotel manager had told me, I could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance through the window.

I was frightened to go to the (excellent) nightly dinner because the waiter did not like that I could not finish the homemade pasta.

Men are so content to be helpless. My husband can't operate the coffee machine, my father cannot cook a meal, has no idea what goes into the food he likes. They are content not to know the most basic ways of servicing their bodies.

Since I left home, I've been a hotel ghost, living on chocolates, coffee, dregs of champagne and candle ends. There's no longer such a thing as lunch, or dinner, only a series of atomized teatimes and cocktail hours, tiny meals. . .

I have lived in relation to desires, often other people's. It is easy to slot desire in. There is a hole in my side into which someone else's desires fit.

The more I wriggle toward divorce the more painful I know it will be, the closer I get to the blank pain I felt yesterday when I realized I had persuaded you to leave, calm panic with no prospect of an end. . . . How much of you, even absent, there is from which to defend myself.

Who am I for? That's the question I kept asking. If I'm not for you, who am I for? I knew I shouldn't want to be for someone: I should be living for art, perhaps. I should be living for myself, or whatever, and yes, I tried to desire these abstracts.

The one thing I learn in the clinic: If I express a desire aloud, I immediately think someone will stop me.

A ghost erases the present by repeating the actions of the past. That's what haunting is. Was this what I wanted from hotels—to be haunted?

She operated quickly, efficiently, and silently—priestess of the observable world in her flowing white lab coat.

I shook my head and turned away. I started running up the crazy paving and took the lift to the tenth floor. I pushed the door to 1022 aside. The bed was made and his case was gone. In the wet bikini I lay down on the bed.

After a good while I started paging forward through the disc. This novel thing was page after page of words then a number then more pages of words and another number. You had to read to get to the end; you couldnt see the point in reading through all that just to get to an end.

When new folk breezed in the door through Silk Cut and Embassy smoke you saw their mouths move straight away to the lyrics of the songs even before they spoke the words of their orders over the bar.

I was made to go up alone. All her savings were on the table in small piles of fivers with name tags by the piles. The blueish brooch was there with other bits of jewellery and more names on paper slips. Sure enough my auntie's name was written next to the brooch.

Drops of rain stuck to the deck windows of this thick glass with metal bolts round, then the drops moved in wind gusts as it got more daylight. I asked for tea and was given it with no milk or sugar then was too upset to say about its bitter taste.

I sometimes took the foul solutions, more often refused. Then Marian got sick, really sick, and Adora had more important things to do than coaxing me into swallowing wheat-germ extract. Now I had a pang: all those syrups and tablets she proffered, and I rejected. That was the last time I had her full attention as a mother. I suddenly wished I'd been easier.

I tried to imagine other images from my life in Chicago: my cubicle at work, my superintendent who still didn't know my name, the dull green Christmas lights the supermarket had yet to take down. A scattering of friendly acquaintances who probably hadn't noticed noticed I'd been gone.

"I used to work in the meat. You cleaned up each night. Afterwards you smelled of blood and it was under your nails as you lifted the glass near your nose in the pub. You pulled the bleeding plastic bag of gubbins, cut open by bones, to the service lift. Blood spoiled three pairs of shoes. You were expected to supply your own footwear."

". . . we do not expect spring flowers to bloom in a black frost, and I think the chill wind that blows from English publishers, with their black suits and thin umbrellas, and their habit of beginning every sentence with 'We are afraid', has nipped off more promising buds than it has strengthened." (Introduction, xviii)

"My point is that you are all arrogant. All Americans are, really, but people like you especially. I have met many of your type over the last few years, coming here to fulfill some personal conquest, but you never stop to think about how arrogant you are. You seek some enlightenment at the expense of my people. You do not care about Iraq. You do not care about my people."

"Do you know why I am here?"
"No..."
"Because this is my home. Not like you, this is not a journey for me. I will not return home from a far away land and tell my family about the strange and foreign sights."
"What's your point?"

"You ever think, like, what it would be like if Dad went up here for a job? To support us?"
"I do, actually."
"It's just, like, it could have happened so easily. Everyone just comes here for work. Do you wonder if he'd be like those guys because that's what it makes you? That's what it turns them into."
"Yes. I get sad thinking about — I don't like thinking about it. Not just Dad, but anyone else we know."

"Leon, do you think you're different since you came here? Do you think people are different at home than they are here?"
" 'course they are. This is a rat cage."
"Then, are they different forever?"
"What are you getting at?"
"People do things here they wouldn't do at home."
"People are bored and crazy."
"But is that who they really are? Or who they are at home?"

"You know, we're all in two places here. And we can get caught up in that, in our own way."
"Well, I'm not staying."
"That may be. You might think that, and that may be. But people kid themselves if they think the only life they're living is somewhere else."

"Aren't you from there?"
"No. Cape Breton."
"Same thing."
"Excuse me, two different places! *They're* accordions and codfish, *we're* fiddles and lobster."
"For God's sake."