I don't know if it was love or an illusion. I don't know if there's ever a way to be certain.

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

Sometimes we don't know how afraid we are until we've reached a strange door and we don't know what will be on the other side.

His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.

I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.