When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.

In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.