“I can speak of you now to anyone because I’ve stopped wanting anything like what I once wanted from you.”

“Swirled tight, trussed, manic, most trusted. You love hills, swells, waves of sand, waves of water. You love traffic on bridges that might split in two. You love stairs leading to stairs leading to ice cream stands. Shards of pottery as good as a map. You love fractured control towers and the very broken Alaskan Way Viaduct. You love squat corner stores and barber-pole signs. You love the idea of privacy in a city of windows, the idea of light in a city of shadows.”

“I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.”

“I decided life was too short to wait for what you want.”

“Stories do not change the world. I’ve learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way.... I mean it’s not the world I want to change.”

“A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it.  It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.”

“I want someone to pinch me so I can feel something, anything. I'm sick of this numbness, of feeling so alone and outside of everything, but I know it's too dangerous to wake up." —Ruth Mendenberg”