No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'.

Life is lived on the inside. What's outside doesn't matter.

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.

You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive.

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.

Words on the page are never prisoners of the page

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.