I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief.

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.

Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.