She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.

Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.

The tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing möbius strip until we come home, eventually, to ourselves.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.