Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.

I do think ordinariness is, in a way, the enemy, but not ordinariness as the opposite of flamboyance.

We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

The world is a big place," he said, "but so is the inside of an apartment!

You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked its wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to trace it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was?

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.