“A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.”

“Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.”

“We thought green was cheerful, but not too cheerful. Green was also serious.”

“no reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. and from love, too.”

“I climbed the stairs and got back into bed, pulling a pillow over my face to block out the summer light. But there was no hiding from reality that morning.”

“I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.”

“and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world.”