For she is my love, and other women are but big bodies of flame.

We parked in back and walked down the stairs with their polished brass railings, past the old-fashioned kitchen. We could see the chefs cooking. It smelled like stew, or meat loaf, the way time should smell, solid and nourishing.

I emitted some civetlike female stink, a distinct perfume of sexual wanting, that he had followed to find me here in the dark.

I'm always looking for something new and interesting to say. And it can't be something I'm directly experiencing.

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author.

I wanted to hear what she was saying. I wanted to smell that burnt midnight again, I wanted to feel that wind. It was a secret wanting, like a song I couldn't stop humming, or loving someone I could never have. No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.

It's all I ever really wanted, that revelation. The possibility of fixed stars.