“I want to protect myself from any further, darker memories of hers, get myself out of here gracefully before something embarrassing happens. She's balanced on the edge of an artificial hilarity that could topple over at any moment into its opposite, into tears and desperation.”

“It was just a moment. A moment like any other. But in that moment, the composure I had been relying on faltered and before I could stop myself, I called her name.”

“But that's typical of me. "This is going to end in tears," I tell myself every time I balance a cup of coffee on the upholstered arm of the chair I'm sitting on. And then, lo and behold, the cup topples and even before it lands, I tell myself, "Told me so!" Not to spell out, or spill out, one of the metaphors of my life, but I always do the stupid thing and then I do it again. I never learn.”

“I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.”

“No, I've been doing this myself forever. I could have gone in here myself, but my daddy doesn't want me to get raped. That happens all the time in bathrooms.”

“Why do we get out of bed? Is there any feeling better then being in bed? What could possibly feel better than this? What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, underneath something very warm, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?”