“If your hand doesn't work for it, your heart doesn't feel sorry for it.”

“There's no such thing as "The One", she once said. They were at dinner in Taipei, with a supplier and his wife. The couple had been married forty years. The idea that there's just one person in the world you're meant to be with, it's illogical, she said. She'd had a few drinks and was enjoying her own loud thoughts. The math just doesn't work! Who you end up with, it's really just an accident of proximity.”

“The voice of the nickly reflection of the moon was not as deep as you might expect. It was a singer’s voice, though, a tenor, one that loved itself without reservation.“I feel time like you dream. Your dreams are jumbled. You can’t remember the order of your dreams, and when you recall them, the memories bend. Faces change. It’s all in puddles and ripples. That’s what time is for me.”

“Well now you're contradicting yourself. With balance there cannot be chaos. With randomness there can be no punishment. You're pleading for punishment in hopes that you'll see your God. Without punishment there is no God. If there is balance then there is your Lord. If balance then afterlife.”

“You better [start writing] now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page.So you have to do it, goddamnit.”

“Their howls rose to the sky and twisted together until they were on, and the other beasts joined in too, all of their voices creating a wild, plaintive song of sorry and abandon and anger and love.”

“Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.”