However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.

Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l'oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people's psychology with my own.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

What can i tell you about the choices we make? Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?

In a world where meaning is often absent or imposed, reading offers a dialogue with ourselves, with society, with history, and with the dead.