“My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope - make yourself a structure you can live inside.”

“I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep.My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside.Amen.”

“With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.”

“and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.”

“My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.”

“I loved my brother, but relying on him was like closing a hand around air.”

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”