You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.