“Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.”

“Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort.So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish. ”

“But I had made contact with a different planet from the one my parents or sister lived on. It was a planet where an act of violence changed your life.”

“I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.”

“How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?”

“Those who say they would rather fight to the death than be raped are fools. I would rather be raped a thousand times. You do what you have to.”

“But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out”