I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is.

Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.

I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you.

There's a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness.

We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

Are you becoming what you've always hated?

I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.