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

That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

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.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.

We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?