Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

However gnawing a deficiency, satiety is worse... We are meant to be hungry.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.

I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary.

It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean.

You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.