“I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty. ... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.”

“I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.”

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”

“I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”

“Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.”

“I realized that your mother couldn't see the emptiness, she couldn't see anything...All of the words I'd written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?”

“We aren’t exactly emptying the oceans; it’s more like clear-cutting a forest with thousands of species to create massive fields with one type of soybean.”