I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.

Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.

Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?

I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.

I get rational when I panic.

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.