I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.

It hit her like a sledgehammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest. Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatred as long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen her or protect her from routine vulnerabilities.

If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.