We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.

Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.

It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss.

She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love - loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.