I've come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn't properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That's what shock is.

Passion and platonic friendliness, often contrary siblings, frequently wear similar faces to hide the great distance between them.

When you know you are dying, self-deceptions fly from your bedside like embers off a bonfire.

Love wasn't a thing you fell in, but rose to. It was what stopped you from falling.

By now, the camouflage had become my skin. My friends wouldn't want to know. Who would want to know? I certainly didn't want to know. All I wanted was to hold my assumptions to the light, and to watch them sparkle in their facets, as all sham gemstones do.

Things don't go away. They become you.

I'd violated the primary rule of junior and senior high-- don't get people talking about you too much. This was wearing the brightest shirt on the playground. This was Mom giving you a kiss in the lobby.