“And that other self, who watches me from the distance of decades,what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,I whose choices made her what she will be?”

“...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”

“She looks sad. She looks angry. She looks different from everyone else I know—she cannot put on that happy face others wear when they know they are being watched. She doesn’t put on a face for me, which makes me trust her somehow.”

“[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.”

“No,” he agreed. “You’re not. She never caused me this agony.”What could I say to that? The way he was looking at me was making my head feel funny. Was making me feel funny and not just in that oh God I just almost died way.Christophe leaned in. His mouth was a mere centimetres from me. “She never made me think I would die of heart failure. She never, never made me fear for her this way.”

“I saw you running," she says, her attention on the rabbit. "What were you running from?""Just running," I say. She watching me silently and intently, like a cat."Why?" she asks.I shrug. "Why not?""It's not Productive." She says it like productivity is holy, the only thing worth having."So?" ~Amy”