You can't just make me different and then leave. You can't. You can't change me and make my whole life centered around you, then leave.

Omnis cellula e cellula," he said again. "All cells come from cells. Every cell is born of a previous cell, which was born of a previous cell. Life comes from life. Life begets life begets life begets life begets life.

A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

I think if you went back to the eighteenth century and you asked a fifteen year old boy, 'Would you like to marry a woman who has had plastic bags needlessly inserted into her breasts?', that fifteen year old boy would probably be like, 'what's plastic?'.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.

I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad's study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read.