“What treaty is it that finally separates those two territories, the hard resolve of our exteriors and the terrible disaster on our insides?”

“RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.”

“There would be people answering to names they did not deserve. It would hurt to say their names. I would head upstairs and crack the seal on a jar of tomorrow's water, next week's water, next year's thin, sweet water--going as far ahead into the future as I could, until the water was barely there, clear and weak and airy-- and I would commence a fine, hard drinking spell, until this whole day, and the days before it, and then the people in those days and myself entirely, and my hard, dead name turned into a slick wire that pulled farther and farther away from me, slipping finally from view as I filled myself, as I took in enough water to make myself forever new to the small world that held me.”

“The Living: Those members, persons, and items that still appear to engage their hands into what is hot, what is rubbery, what cannot be seen or lifted”

“Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I'd said that, how many times I'd meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I am perfectly aware of the fantasy involved here, but what we want is almost never exempt from the impossible. That barrier has very little meaning for me these days. Given what’s happened, the impossible is just a blind spot that dissolves if we move our heads fast enough. History seems to show that the impossible is probably the most likely thing of all.”

“Anyone who believes that you can make art from language is part of a small, nearly-vanishing community, and we should all form a wedge and march on the enemy. Do we need different uniforms in this struggle, different stripes on our arms so that it's clear who the realists are? Maybe, but I care less and less.”