“You fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye”

“but nothing I ever gave was good for you;it was like white bread to goldfish.they cram and cram, and it kills them,and they drift in the pool, belly-up,making stunned facesand playing on our guiltas if their own toxic gluttonywas not their own faultthere you are, still outside the window,still with your hands out, stillpallid and fish-eyed, still actingstupidly innocent and starved.”

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.”

“It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.”

“Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned.It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it.Then she fell asleep.”

“Though at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.”

“Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.”