Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

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

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)

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