“the art of life, mostly, the art of avoiding pain”

“I feel like a jug in which wine is poured until it overflows.”

“I'm standing in the lake, forming a whirlpool with my arms, letting the force of atonement pull me into its center until I cannot any longer hang onto my observations or any sense of myself, like dust and hydrogen clouds getting all excited white creating new stars to light the backyard. How poignantly emptiness cries out to be filled.”

“Words and phrases grew only slowly”

“Proximity to this death makes me nostalgic for the French language.”

“We all came from our mothers' bellies. We all have hope in our veins. We don't want history to forget us, but the dead look after the afterwards.”

“My soft voice and demeanor were useless. In a pint jar, I carried a cremated friend, like flesh scraped from a cistern.”