Anything incomprehensible has a sexual significance to many people under thirty-five.

She felt the essence of herself pulled finer and smaller like those streams of spun glass that pull and stretch till there remains but a glimmering illusion. Neither falling nor breaking, the stream spins finer. She felt herself very small and ecstatic. Alabama was in love.

Father said conflict develops the character

There seemed to be some heavenly support beneath his shoulder blades that lifted his feet from the ground in ecstatic suspension, as if he secretly enjoyed the ability to fly but was walking as a compromise to convention.

Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.

Love is bitter and all there is, and that the rest is for the emotional beggars of the earth.

I believed I was a salamander, and it seems I am nothing but an impediment.