“I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.”

“I felt like an Israeli girl soldier, in shorts and the hot wind, sighting down the barrel of the rifle, holding the .38 with both hands. It was a strange feeling, him looking at me as I aimed. I found I couldn't quite lose myself in the target. His eyes split my attention between the C in Coke and my awareness of him watching me. And I thought, this was what it was like to be beautiful.”

“The night crackled ... Everything had turned to static electricity in the heat. I combed my hair to watch the sparks fly from the ends.”

“Now was too big, like a giant dark planet coming up over the horizon. she wanted then. That's what he'd seen that day, a brightness with darkness all around, watching her, as if she were glamorous, as if she were a rare and mysterious creature.”

“Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.”

“here, here is my dark world. you carry it for a change. im out”

“I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.”