I want to force myself again and again to leave the warmth and security of static situations and move into the world of growth and suffering where the real books are people's minds and souls.

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.

What is so real as the cry of a child?

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

I hadn't, at the last moment, felt like washing off the two diagonal lines of dried blood that marked my cheeks. They seemed touching, and rather spectacular, and I thought I would carry them around with me, like the relic of a dead lover, till they wore off of their own accord.

I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.