“My sock cut off my circulation, my uniform sweater itched, and my underwear seemed to be staging some sort of revolt to make me as uncomfortable as possible.And this were the good points of the day.”

“I'm sure glad socks are made out of cotton, and not ice-cube trays, because I don't like keeping my socks in the freezer. Because if I did that, then where would I keep my underwear?”

“As uncomfortable as I feel, I keep the girly underwear on anyway. Who knows? Provided they stay the hell out of my butt crack, they might make me feel sexier later on today.”

“In America: each year the day before school after summer vacation I sat on my bed touching my notebooks, pencils, ruler-holding the stern and sweet smelling brown oxfords in my lap and spreading my skirt and blouse and underwear and socks before me. My mother would come in and always say the same thing: “Free paper burn now.” Such words conspire to make a past. Such words conjure a knowledge. Such words make assimilation impossible. They stay with you for years. They puzzle but you sense a significance. I need these words.”

“Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;Who, though they cannot answer my distress,Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,For that they will not intercept my tale:When I do weep, they humbly at my feetReceive my tears and seem to weep with me;And, were they but attired in grave weeds,Rome could afford no tribune like to these.”

“When my friend Melot set the trap, I think I knew it. I turned to death full face, as I had turned to love with my whole body. I would let death enter me as you had entered me. You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.”