I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked.

No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.

I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.

Fertility says, "Can you relax and just let things happen?" I ask, does she mean, like disasters, like pain, like misery? Can I just let all that happen? "And Joy," she says, "and Serenity, and Happiness, and Contentment." She says all the wings of the Columbia Memorial Mausoleum. "You don't have to control everything," she says. "You can't control everything." But you can be ready for disaster. A sign goes by saying, Buckle Up. "If you worry about disaster all of the time, that's what you are going to get," Fertility says.