“After repeating almost everything I said, I excused my accent and told them that I knew I spoke like I had plums in my mouth. I then had to explain that was a British expression, as their faces read as though I was saying I’d had their brother-in-law’s balls on my tongue.”

“I thought about it for a moment. Should I dress up like a bush and stalk poor, innocent woodland creatures that will be brutally gunned down as they frolic in the glade? Or should I spend more time confined to a room with Danny’s mother? “Okay, we’ll go hunting if it really means that much to you.”

“Let me put it this way: I am not a bad person, so if there is a god I would hope that he would judge me on what I do and who I am, as against someone that does believe but still doesn’t live a good life.”

“And, Momma, if there is a separate heaven for gay people,” Danny continued with a smile, “well, you’ll just have to come visit.” He raised his mother’s chin gently with the side of his index finger, forcing her to look at him. “I hear it’s on a rainbow, not a cloud, so at least you’ll get some color.”

“Reading. The erotics of reading for me -- its moment of trembling pleasure -- lie in those times when I realise that what I am reading is just what I was about to say. It is a moment of jealousy and disappointment, as if the occasion had been stolen from me, but it is a moment of excitement, too -- because I think I would like to try and say it better, because now the monologue in my mind has become dialogue. My immediate impulse is to write something, anything, notes to tell me the significance of what I have read, an appreciative letter to the author, the first sentences in a preface to a book that will never be written. Th archives of my readings are monumentally high. I can never let these erotic moments go. They are the paper trail of my mind.”

“Sex with him was mind-blowing. It was a cross between a triple X movie and a Mills and Boon novel.”

“My favorite book is The Mysterious Island. I order my books from a flimsy catalog the teacher hands out to every student in the class. Emil and the Detectives. White Fang. Like that. Money is tight for us, but when it comes to books my mother is a spendthrift; I can order as many as I like. I sit here day after day, waiting for my books to arrive. My books. It takes a month or more, but when they finally do, when the teacher opens the big box and passes out the orders to the kids, checking the books against a form taken from her desk, I glow with happiness. I've never had the newest dress, or the prettiest, but I always have the tallest stack of books. Little paperbacks that smell of wet ink. I lay my cheek against their cool covers, anticipating the stories inside, knowing all the other girls wonder what I could possibly want with those books.”