A cliche is everything you've ever heard of.

I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.

What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest?

I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.

Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing.

Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.