We didn't think the library was funny looking in it's faux- Greek splendor, nor did we find the cuisine limited or bland, or the movies at the Michigan theater relentlessly American and mindless. These were opinions I came to later, after I became a denizen of a City, an expatriate anxious to distance herself from the bumpkin ways of her youth. I am suddenly consumed 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.

I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.

I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.

There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.

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

Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.