“A treasure that fire cannot eat. my little secret. I've carried them wrapped in a handkerchief in my bosom through some tight places. Not for nothing do Shamy girls have good boobs.”

“The song ended, but I kept my arms wrapped tight around her, not letting her move an inch. If she was having some internal battle again, she could do so in my arms. “Watcha doing, wifey?” I joked, secretly enjoying the sound of that.”

“Perhaps your envy counselled her Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But I've most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those.”

“I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change — most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink — are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.”

“I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.”

“..Do nothing, eat little, read slowly, watch nature just happen by itself, buy only what is freely given and give away what cannot be owned by anyone in the first place. The secret is to leave something alone, and then to fnd that life just aligns itself..”