I believed the perceptions undergirding my sketches arose from my being invisible or at least underestimated, including being mistaken for someone nicer than I was. Since childhood, I’d often felt like a spy or an anthropologist, and I was fine with others at TNO knowing who I really was only because they, too, were, at their core, spies and anthropologists and weirdos.
-- Sally Milz (Chapter 1)

Importance: Sally is afraid of getting too close to people. As a writer, she is more comfortable writing than speaking, and she never wants to appear on camera. These words explain some of why she feels more comfortable at TNO than at other places. She thinks that the people there are like her. She also demonstrates with these words her belief that she is unkind. She says this numerous times throughout the novel, but the only times she acts rudely or in an unkind manner are when she...