“I had abandoned Elana; I deserved her uncertainty. I closed my eyes and focused on her touch. Perhaps she wouldn't have understood had I tried to explain it to her, but to me Elana was not only Elana--she was the sad-eyed love of mine who used to bag groceries at Woodley's in Buffalo; she was the sweet one who always sat across from me on the city bus in Niagara Falls; she was the girl I'd picked up hitchhiking in Mobile and dropped off in New Orleans, brash, full of sarcastic humor, but truly lonely and scared; she was the one I'd nabbed pinching Newports for her dad from the Marathon station I'd worked at in Bakersfield (I'd softened and paid for the pack myself); yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sisters how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars-she was all of them, and she was so much more that was just her that I still didn't know.”

“Sometimes I remember the way I used to be," she said as we sat across the table from each other, "and I'm surprised nobody ever smacked me." I took a long sip of my coffee so that I would not have to answer her. I wanted to tell her that she ought to be more generous to the girl she used to be, if not out of respect for herself, then out of respect for me, or more specifically for the boy I used to be, who loved that girl, after all.”

“In PlasterI shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was 
Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold. I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer.
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior!
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist.
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her:She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages.

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain, And it was I who attracted everybody's attention,
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up --
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality.

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it.
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience: She humored my weakness like the best of nurses,
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.In time our relationship grew more intense.

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish.
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,
As if my habits offended her in some way. She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces
Simply because she looked after me so badly. Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal.She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful -- Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her. She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp -- I had forgotten how to walk or sit, So I was careful not to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself. Living with her was like living with my own coffin: Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully. I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us. She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit. I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her,
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.--written 26 Feburary 1961”

“Let me explain it to you then. I just had a beautiful girl trust me enough to touch her and see her in a way no one else ever has. I got to hold her and watch her and feel her as she came apart in my arms. It was like nothing else I'd ever experienced. She was breathtaking and she was responding to me. She wanted me. I was the one making her spiral out of control.”

“There was so much force and beauty in the windows, such unsettled sadness in what little I knew of Rose's life, all her longing, her distance from her daughter. Just knowing she had existed opened new and uneasy possibilities within my understanding of the story I'd always thought I'd known by heart. ... Whoever Rose had been, she was gone, unable to speak for herself, fading into the past as surely as these rainy colors were diffusing, even now [p. 142].”

“As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it. I didn't know why she seemed so sad and happy at the same time. To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together.”