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.

It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.

Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.

Many, if not most, countries blithely expect their citizens to have carte blanche access to the U.S., "land of immigrants," as a veritable human right, but put up all manner of barriers to Americans who want to emigrate in the opposite direction.

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