It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails.

I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing.

I understood why she did it. At that moment I knew why people tagged graffiti on the walls of neat little houses and scratched the paint on new cars and beat up well-tended children. It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

My loneliness tasted like pennies.

Let me tell you a few things about regret. There is no end to it. Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds.