Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.

The only sex education my mother ever gave me was the injunction: 'Never let a boy touch you down there.' I had no idea what she meant. She seemed to be referring to my knees.

It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.