Strange how love coexists with hate, how they render eachother mute, how the swilling of them together makes a new and softer, sympathetic thing.

I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.

There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world.

No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'.

She had witnessed the world's most beautiful things, and allowed herself to grow old and unlovely. She had felt the heat of a leviathan's roar, and the warmth within a cat's paw. She had conversed with the wind and had wiped soldier's tears. She had made people see, she'd seen herself in the sea. Butterflies had landed on her wrists, she had planted trees. She had loved, and let love go. So she smiled.

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.