like a kid kicked out of class. humiliated and free.

I'm a fish swimming by...catch me if you want me.

Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.

Many women get involved with a man that you pretty much know isn't suitable and you're kind of breaking your rules, but he's attractive in some unknown way. And then he doesn't even realize what a sacrifice you're making by being with him and he dumps you!

I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, men who made you love them then changed their minds.

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.

It's their skins I'm peeling," she said. "The skins of the insipid scribblers, which I graft to the page, creating monsters of meaninglessness.