“His client needs him, he says. Needs him? But isn’t he needed at home?”

“I’d thought he was stars and then I’d thought he was a fox. I had thought I’d been alone, but I hadn’t.”

“Anna would say that she was a cat like Gemma, with nine lives to spend, all nine precious and delicious.”

“The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands.”

“Were there language, I'd be my own lone letter.”

“Step out from behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living breathing bad hair day kind of person.”

“Imagine music gushing down the hollow places in your bones, and making you liquid, and giving you speed. Imagine music turning your body into a song.”