My way of finding a place in this world is to write one.

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.

I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.

It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow, which is supposed to be dyed to match God-knows-what, on my feet; making promises over the telephone about things I will do at a precise hour next year.

The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece