“She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.”

“We drank our coffee and talked a little bit more about practical things. Natalie came over and asked me if I knew what the trees were called. I said no. She told me they were jacarandas. She said one March two years ago she was feeling suicidal. She had planned to step in front of a bus. Then she looked at the jacaranda tree and changed her mind.You decided to hang yourself from it instead? I said.”

“The guy's name was Colt.Colt, said Thebes. Like a baby, male horse?I guess, said the guy, or a gun.Well, which do you prefer? she said.What do you mean? he asked.Like, how do you prefer to think of yourself? As a baby, male horse?No, he said, he didn't really like to think of himself that way.Well, then, as a gun? she said.No, not really, he said. He preferred basically not to think of himself at all.”

“My dad loved the shit out of her and hardly ever knew what to say to her and she loved the shit out right back out of him and filled the silent part of their lives with books and coffee and other things.”

“She was a strange, unsettled planet that had had once sustained life. She was a language that I had thought I almost understood even though I couldn't speak it. She hadn't always been this way. She used to wear high knee socks and short shorts and tube tops, and travel everywhere on roller skates.”

“Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside. He offered you a what? she yelled. An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush. What is it? she said. Coffee! I yelled. Irma, can I come and live--I turned around again and began to run.”

“There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.”