“I like my coffee black, my beer from Germany, wine from Burgundy, the darker, the better. I like my heroes complicated and brooding, James Dean in oiled leather, leaning on a motorcycle. You know the color. ("Ode to Chocolate")”

“On this blue day, I want to be nothing more than an amanuensis to the birds, transcribing all the bits and snatches of song riding in on the wind.”

“Are we always to be wantingwhat isn't:the greenest grassaccord and principlemotherhood and career?Yet our age lies to uslike an asp,whispering. "Both.”

“Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.”

“Shoes, then, sliding me across the floor to greet the day. Dreaming of coffee. I’m afraid I didn’t miss the physical presence of my husband in his absences as much as I missed coffee.”

“A dark-chocolate truffle melts in my mouth, and I forget about everything else ... even the fact that I'm on a diet.”

“Every few weeks I get a letter from Léopoldville, which holds me on track. My heart races when I see the long blue envelope in a sister's hand, delivered to me under her sleeve as if a man himself were inside. And, oh, he is! Still sweet and bitter and wise and, best of all, still alive. I squeal, I can't help it, and run outside to the courtyard to taste him in private like a cat with a stolen pullet. I lean my face against the cool wall and kiss its old stones in praise of captivity, because it's only my being here and his being in prison that saves us both for another chance at each other.”