“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”

“In that latitude the temperature flirted with a hundred degrees for a few of the dog days, but to a child it can hardly ever be too hot. I liked the sun licking the backs of my legs, and the sweat between my shoulder blades, and the violet evenings, with ice cream and fireflies, wherein the long day slowly cooled. I liked the ants piling up dirt like coffee grounds between the bricks of our front walk, and the milkweed spittle in the vacant lot next door. I liked the freedom of shorts, sneakers, and striped T-shirt, with freckles and a short hot-weather haircut.We love easily in summer, perhaps, because we love our summer selves.”

“So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.”

“All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.”

“Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.”

“Whatever men make," she says, "what they felt when they made it is there...Man is a means for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.”