"It wasn't her first pregnancy. In Berlin a couple of years before she'd managed to pick one up, like a nasty infection..."

"This was an empire that had carved itself out of snow and sadness, a nation of people where each had been given both a life not worth living and an iron will to survive."

"Jan's effeminate side is something he slips in and out of like an outfit, of which he has a closetful."

"Of course, nothing cures a bad case of arts degree faster than a decade of struggle, something she discovered as her youth, and her trust fund, waned."

"They say there are no atheists at the end of a gun."