How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.

...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.

Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

Don't wish,"said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...

...I dabble in causes and effects.