When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.

Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?

Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life.

Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.

While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark

I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.

The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance.