“Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.”

“From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.”

“Beauty,” he whispered. “What?” I asked.“Beauty. It’s pure beauty you don’t wanna be away from me. I don’t like that, baby. I love it”

“Jeanne, I fell asleep among the paintings, where I could sit for many days worshipping your portrait. I fell in love with your portrait, Jeanne, because it will never change. I have such a fear of seeing you grow old, Jeanne, I fell in love with an unchanging you that will never be taken away from me. I was wishing you would die, so that no one could take you away from me, and I would love the painting of you as you would look eternally.”

“I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery.”

“No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.”