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.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss—you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "—three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "—four.

As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.

I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.

What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.