Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too."

…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.

The compelling thing about making art — or making anything, I suppose — is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art.

Why is love intensified by absence?

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.