Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

She could not mourn. She could no longer weep grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.