“Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.”

“Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think something good can come from any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore.”

“The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.”

“And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.”

“Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.”

“As I make my way through, I feel okayness reaching through me.The funny thing is that okayness is not a real word. It's not in the dictionary.But it's in me.”

“Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear.”