Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully

Maruman does not loll.

She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it.

The mirror had broken into millions of pieces and the wind blew them all over the world. If a person got a speck in their eye, the person would only see the ugly side of things from then on, but if a piece got in their blood and it reached their heart, it would freeze into a solid block of ice and they couldn't feel anything anymore

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.