Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins.

A book's flaws make it less predictable.

Life should always be like this. ... Like lingering over a good meal.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.