Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

The past is a closed door.

Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.

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