“Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing--that was me.”

“Ravens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.”

“...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as h umbel as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?”

“Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.
 Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could.”

“Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.”

“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history.”

“The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.”