you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.

Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line; frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.