Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?

...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.

Oh now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future

...the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.

If you have an ancestor who is a Benedictine monk, we would rather not know it.

Those times are over and gone, and good riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the tick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.

And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.