I am part of what she thinks is her illness, a symptom of which she thinks she has been cured. She, on the other hand, is what I was looking for.

Love. The black hook. The spear singing through the mind.

If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.

How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud... I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.

There is a legacy of violence against native women that has gotten worse and worse over time.

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery.

I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on.