The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in books that I would find, for the next few years, my lovers. They were men, not boys. They were self-possessed and sardonic, with a ferocious streak in them, reserves of gloom.

people who believe in miracles do not make much fuss when they actually encounter one

I despised their antics because I took life seriously and had a much more lofty and tender notion of romance. But I would have liked to get their attention just the same.

Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.

What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.

Now i no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.