“But if a role model in her seventies isn't layered with contradictions - as we all come to be - then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another's existence and place it against our own if it isn't as incongruous, ambiguous, inconsistent, and paradoxical as our own lives are?”

“Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Personally, I don't think it is. But art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience.”

“...prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm.”

“The secret of marriage is thinking that your partner is better than yourself.”

“Having a collection, taking it out, looking at it, reordering it, and putting it away is creative in itself. It doesn't yield a product, like the results of an art, but is stops time, as making art does.”

“Robert Phelps, a biographer of Colette, said about watching, 'Along with love and work, this is the third great salvation. For whenever someone is seriously watching, a form of lost innocence is restored. It will not last, but during those minutes his self-consciousness is relieved.' Noticing keeps you alive.”

“She nodded against me. “Do you need me to do anything?” I didn’t need a thing from her, but I wanted everything. I wanted her to leave Tyler, to love me, to want to live here with me for the rest of our lives. I wanted so damn much. ”Just go back to sleep, then enjoy the rest of the day with the girls. I’ll be back tonight.” ”I’ll be waiting her for you.” Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in and held it. if only she knew what she did to me.”