Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.

The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.

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

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.