She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.

I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but because they were cracking up.

...he enclosed pieces of string that he used to measure out his body--his head, thigh, forearm, finger, neck, everything. He wanted me to sleep with them under my pillow. He said that when he came back, we would remeasure his body against the string as proof that he hadn't changed.

They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.