“Out of used furniture she made a tree.”

“At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day....”

“The town does not existexcept where one black-haired tree slipsup like a drowned woman into the hot sky.”

“I suffer for birds and firefliesbut not frogs, she said,and threw him across the room.Kaboom!Like a genie out of a samovar,a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.”

“The Witch's Life"When I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her.”

“There once was a millerwith a daughter as lovely as a grape.He told the king that she couldspin gold out of common straw.The king summoned the girland locked her in a room full of strawand told her to spin it into goldor she would die like a criminal.Poor grape with no one to pick.Luscious and round and sleek.Poor thing.To die and never see Brooklyn.(Rumpelstiltskin)”

“She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid.”