purification in fire. public cremation

I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze.

As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.

I took my mother's knife and played johnny johnny johnny on the playhouse floor. I was drunk, stabbed myself every few throws. I held my hand up and there was satisfaction at seeing my blood, the way there was when I saw the red gouges onmy face that people stared at and turned away. They were thinking I was beautiful, but they were wrong, now they could see how ugly and mutilated I was.

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

A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself.