That summer when she was eighteen, it seemed anything could happen, anything at all.

I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.

She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric.

She thinks how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.

There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.

It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.