“We have often had this particular exchange about climate and landscape and why we both feel so lonely here uprooted. It was what each of us had wanted of course.Besides wanting to experience a place we hated, we wanted to be insomniacs and loners, losers and drop-outs. To know the sky was the only location of meaning and joy left to us.”

“There is no longer any class outside the class of character, and no history to put your faith in.You can actually live as if you have no culture, no perspective particular to a date in time.You are an individual whose prime and solitary property is your own body.Dying becomes a hell beyond all reason or justice in this ahistorical context.”

“Why does a heart wear its eyesinto helllike slivers of false sunshine”

“The ring comes whenever it willbecause it's darkwhere the mountains motherand being stuck in one spotis something to ring bells about”

“It is thus with our life. We silently glide along, little dreaming about the waves which will so soon sweep over us, dashing us up against the rocks, or stranding us forever. we do not dream that we shall ever wreck, until the greater wave comes over us, and we bend beneath its power.”

“The wildness of the flower is all in the tone”

“We all start out thinking that there is such a thing as perfection and that there's something wrong with us if we settle for less. First we won't eat the food with the brown spots. Then we hate ourselves because we have our own brown spots—pimples or ears that are too big or legs that are too skinny.”