Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly

My family suffered. My hair turned up in every corner, every drawer, every meal. Even in the rice puddings Tessie made, covering each little bowl with wax paper before putting it away in the fridge--even into these prophylactically secure desserts my hair found its way! Jet black hairs wound themselves around bars of soap. They lay pressed like flower stems between the pages of books. They turned up in eyeglass cases, birthday cards, once--I swear--inside an egg Tessie had just cracked. The next-door neighbor's cat coughed up a hairball one day and the hair was not the cat's.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness", "joy", or "regret". Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that is oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions.

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

Some cities have fallen into ruin and some are built upon ruins but others contain their own ruins while still growing.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.