I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

Axiom: you are a sea. Your eye- lids curve over chaos My hands where they touch you, create small inhabited islands soon you will be all earth: a known land, a country.

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

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

A non-event ... is better to write about than an event, because with a non-event you can make up the meaning yourself, it means whatever you say it means.

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

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.