You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

I don't want to boss anyone and I don't want to be bossed.

The space that I can call mine.. is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space.. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth.

I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved

Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson

...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.