My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.

I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.

Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.

I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea.

She had her reasons. Not that they were the same as anybody else's reasons.

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out.

Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.