“As the paramedics lifted her, my grandmother's corpulent arms swung like bat wings with the life squeezed out of them.”

“Just as I was beginning my drift into unconsciousness, there was an explosion. Not a movie explosion but a small real-life explosion, like the ignition of an unhappy gas oven that holds a grudge against its owner.”

“She worked diligently to develop her understanding of breath; for she knew that with breath she could create a world. She imagined herself breathing life into the glass and, with every week that passed, Sei came closer to realizing the loveliness of the objects that she could picture in her imagination.”

“The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. I chose the accident, but I could just as easily have started with any point during my thirty-five years of life before that. Why not start with: " I was born in the year 19-, in the city of -?”

“The burn unit is often the most distant wing of a hospital, because burn victims are so susceptible to infection that they must be kept away from other patients. More important, perhaps, is that the placement minimizes the chance of visitors stumbling across a Kentucky Fried Human.”

“I understand that some people find God after misfortune, although this seems to me even more ridiculous than finding Him in good times. 'God smote me. He must love me.' It's like not wanting a romantic relationship until a member of the opposite sex punches you in the face. My 'miraculous survival' will not change my opinion that Heaven is an idea constructed by man to help him cope with the fact that life on earth is both brutally short, and paradoxically, far too long. ”

“Every Good Friday, this anchored but ever-changing anniversary of my accident, I go to the little creek that saved my life and light one more candle. I offer thanks for two facts: that I am one year older, and that I am one year closer to death.”