Kate Bernheimer's fiction offers a unique and delicate gift, the tempting mirage of a grace that constantly escapes. The Complete Tales of Merry Gold is an exceptional, lovely book, beautifully enigmatic, speaking a language that mysteriously evokes the unspoken.

The word suffering is full and whole and perfect as a pierced heart, sweet, rushing and tender ... Suffering is the joy of someone about to be martyred, illumination of something given up as an offer.

Beneath the violet pillar, in the vacuum before the roar of the cloud, there came a soft sound that might have been heard by those who listened closely: the gentle sigh of an idea unbound.

We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.

Suffering itself is beloved: love and suffering are far closer to each other than love and pleasure.

The gun is mightier than the pen, was our true opinion, and the RPG is mightier still.

We're so many, we're so hard to distinguish from each other, but we long to be distinguished.