Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that.

... survival is the least of my desires.

she got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different..." from Two or Three Things i Know For Sure