Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!

You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But it's no good, because I know you can't.

Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.

we lived in the gaps between the stories

There are some virtues to not saying what you think all the time.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.