“He felt like a bottle that is being slowly filled with warm, dirty warter.”

“I felt a stack of shelves, and these were filled with plastic bottles and maybe buckets, and one object that felt like the worst thing in the world but which turned out later to be a sandwich.”

“The warmth of his body shouldn’t have felt good. He was angry and every muscle was tense. It was like being leaned on by a very heavy, warm brick. A sexy brick.”

“Long dormant feelings poured through my dried-up limbs and wound through me, slowly filling the emptiness. Like an irrigated field, I felt myself blossom and grow with new vigor. He was the sun, and the tenderness he showed me was life-giving water. ”

“Home after midnight from a debate on the wording of a minor municipal bylaw on bottle recycling, he felt like he was a pin in the hinge of power.”

“There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.”