Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.

There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.

You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.

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.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

But instead of tears, when I press my face against the pillow, a horrible, primal scream comes out of me. It's unlike anything I thought myself capable of. Rage, unlike anything I've ever known.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.