My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

Lovers. Not a soft word, as people thought, but cruel and tearing.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.

You think that would have changed things? The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.

What if people really did that - sent their love through the mail to get rid of it? What would it be that they sent? A box of chocolates with centers like the yolks of turkey eggs. A mud doll with hollow eye sockets. A heap of roses slightly more fragrant than rotten. A package wrapped in bloody newspaper that nobody would want to open.

I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.