We twist our souls around each other’s miseries.

She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.

He was losing her incrementally. It might be a few stray hairs listless on the pillow, or the crescents of bitten fingernails tossed behind the headboard, or a dark shape dissolving in soap. As a net is no more than holes tied together, they were bonded by what was no longer there." (ARC p. 63)

We twist our souls around each other’s miseries.

Inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce, and that is who we are.

What parts had she discarded for the sake of her sanity? What had she cut from herself? Had he stared into her pupils he would have emerged, bewildered and blinking, on the far side of the earth. Was he awed by her? Absolutely. Did he respect her? Unequivocally. Want to be anything like her? No, never, not at all.

Sleep just a while longer, that's it, where else can you go where you neither suffer nor cause suffering.