“When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.”

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

“Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.”

“It's so heartbreaking, violence, when it's in a house-like seeing the clothes in a tree after an explosion. You may be prepared to see death but not the clothes in the tree.”

“Outside, with Labor Day having come and gone, summer is fighting a dying battle against the fall air. The leaves are hanging perilously on the trees, knowing full well they're going to make the plunge, clinging on as if they stand a chance not to. The garbage smell that has wafted around us for the better part of August is dissipating, ushered out with the humidity, and in its place a briskness is filtering in, like something you'd smell from a bottle of Tide.”

“The sky is grey, the air hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty.”