There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch.

It is scary, sometimes, Tomas admitted. But the scary bits are what make you brave.

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?

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

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

A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.

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.