In a train...smash. In his arm her last...breath.' He had loved her. But he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful. As if suffering was shameful, disgusting, as if pain were a crime. Who can judge another man's suffering?

Dawn tinted the darkness like water ink.

The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

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

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash.

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.