“I stood in my own field, wanting obligations to fall from me. This is one way of contemplating suicide, yet it's the exact opposite: what I wanted was to be alive, to escape all the damage, to shed it like snakeskin, to emerge pure and naked and laughing.”

“I didn't know the exact trajectory of my breakdown, but I did know that I'd become weak, holding onto wildness, cherishing the idea of it the way you blow a dying fire.”

“Fucking, drinking, smoking, loving, living, freebasing, spending, laughing, crying, working, falling apart, kissing, writing, blacking out.”

“I now doubted myself. Innocencce was finite and could not be regenerated. Like spinal fluid. I knew this because I had run out.”

“She didn't tell me how to live, and I didn't tell her how to die. We let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Outside my window, truckers trucked, hookers fucked, cops cruised, kids smoked, elders yelled, invalids slept, spouses fought, lovers kissed, while I watched a pussycat playing with stars in a black room.”

“New Year's Eve. It's a promise of a night. Single, married or widowed, in love, loveless or lovelorn, we all leave our apartments and pick through snow in high heels, or descend subway stairs in tuxedos, lured to wherever we're going--whether we know it or not, would deny it or not--by the kiss of a stranger.”