Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.

I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.

Why were you feeling low? Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.

We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.

I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.

He is not bad, I don't think. Perhaps he is simply too lazy to be good.

Your laughter is like cool water to me," I said. I felt my heart sob at these strange words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange. " "You are so serious all of a sudden," she told me. "I am not any one thing," I said. (137)