There's a gift in your lap and it's beautifully wrapped and it's not your birthday. You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you're alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you're that important.

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen." — Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.

When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.

I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.

It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.