Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.

The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.

Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag.

Oh, Jacques, we're used to each other, we're a pair of captive hawks caught in the same cage, and so we've grown used to each other. That's what passes for love at this dim, shadowy end of the Camino Real.

I don't think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we're all ambiguous sexually.

But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark -- that sort of make everything else seem -- unimportant.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.