And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.

Vengeful as nature herself, she loves her children only in order to devour them better and if she herself rips her own veils of self-deceit, Mother perceives in herself untold abysses of cruelty as subtle as it is refined.

She stood lost in eternity wearing a crazy dress, watching the immense sky.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn between a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.

If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?

Drosselmeier had unwittingly exposed himself to an overdose of reality, and it had destroyed his reason.