Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.

She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.

The time has to be right and the heart willing.

You begin always knowing nothing. You remain forever an amateur, a first timer.

We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too.

At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling.

Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.