Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.

I did not need to know if he could love me. I needed to know if he could need me.

In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.