Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.

Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.