Things which don't shift and grow are dead things.

What is it about us human beings that we can’t let go of lost things?

You don't have anything if you don't have the stories.

For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke... They saw his outline but they did not realize it was hollow inside.

But sometimes what we call 'memory' and what we call 'imagination' are not so easily distinguished.

Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time.

relationships. That's all there really is. There's your relationship with the dust that just blew in your face, or with the person who just kicked you end over end. ... You have to come to terms, to some kind of equilibrium, with those people around you, those people who care for you, your environment.