amsterdam

After every shirt she looks at me and smiles, letting go of air she no longer needs. She laughs after the sweater, knowing I__ gonna tell her it__ too hot for it, knowing she__l say it__ for the plane and ask __hat if the room gets cold?

But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded.

.. the smell of canals and cigarette smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafés drinking beer, saying their r's and g's in a way I'd never learn. I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before this recurrance that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again. That is probably true even if you live to be ninety.

Prostitution is not exactly a reputable business over there either, even though the girls actually have to pay taxes on their earnings, and submit to regular health check ups. Even the prostitutes have universal healthcare over there. The benefit of legal prostitution is obvious: tax income for the city, healthier girls, and safety. In Amsterdam, each girl has an alarm button next to her bed that she can press if one of her "customers" tries to rape or hurt her. The police will arrive within minutes and protect the girl from harm.

By seeing how small the world is, I realize how capable I am. I can conquer anything. Anywhere. Anyone.

The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil.

Neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all.

All we can do if we're lucky is stich up the mistakes other people make.

From little seeds great flowers grow.

That may be. But to decide that I was never going to live as a proper woman was not your choice to make.' 'What do you mean a proper woman?' 'A proper woman marries - she has children -' 'Then what does that make me? Am I not a proper woman? Last time I looked I certainly was.

The rules of this house are written in water. I must either sink or swim.

The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck - but Nella waits, until she can no longer difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away.

Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out.

You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still.

I feel younger than eighteen but burdened as a eighty-year-old.

What was once, is no longer.

This city is like no other city in the world. It is brilliant but it is bloated, and I've never called it home

There are horizons through the brickwork, you wait and see.