It is always hard to believe that the will to change something does not produce an immediate change.

Death is a dramatic accomplishment of absence; language may be almost as effective.

She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out.

For in spite of the snapdragons and the duty millers and the cherry blossoms, it was always winter.

From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.

I have always disliked the morning, it is too responsible a time, with the daylight demanding that it be 'faced' and (usually when I wake for I wake late) with the sun already up and in charge of the world, with little hope of anyone usurping or challenging its authority. A shot of light in the face of a poor waking human being and another slave limps wounded into the light-occupied territory.

There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.