But I knew one more thing. That people w ho denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger.

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

Who was I, really? I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces. I was starting to find some of them, working my way upriver, collecting a secret cache of broken memories in a shoebox.

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

A fish has no concept of water.

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked... One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

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