“Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a small woosh that smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.”

“... with the few small spots of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet stale scent of incense, and the warm smell of the burning wax. And she at rest within her own star.”

“She just shook her head and pulled out a small bottle of some random pop star's signature perfume, spritzing me with the sickly-sweet smell. "Oh, come on Ash, that smells like a unicorn fart," I cried, recoiling at the overpowering, candylike smell.”

“It's then I smell smoke. "You even smoke while you brush your teeth?" She looks at me sideways. "Menthol", she says.”

“They haven't spoken about it, they haven't said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let's work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people's lives, into other people's arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn't make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy's arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowah doowah doowah.”

“...but she never knew what it was like to walk away from the thing she had most wanted. Years later she would say, "Photography allowed me to make the world and be in the world.”