There is always the threat of tomorrow's treachery, or next year's treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that.

There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake.

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things...I just loved her. Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones -- that kind of love.

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.

I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy.