“I need to leave something behind. Something that will stay. This room should be a historical landmark, the site of the beginning and end of Colby and Bev. Several minutes have passed, and I know that if I wait too long there will be a knock on the door and I'll have to go, but I need to leave a mark. It has to be significant enough to last, but subtle enough that the maid won't notice and wash it away. As I'm looking around I realize that I never noticed the print above the bed. It's another in the family series - a faded wedding portrait. Groom in tux. Bride with pearls. It comes off the wall easily.I set the print on the bedspread and wit eht dust on the wall with the sleeve of my hood. I take out a Sharpie from my bag. The wall has yellowed to create a perfect rectangle where the photograph must have been hanging, unremoved, for years.I fill the whiter space with this: I never got to tell you how beautiful you are.And then I return the frame to its place on the wall and go back out into the night.”

“Should I tell you that my room is walled up?...In what way might I leave it? Here is how: Goodwill knows no obstacle; nothing can stand before deep desire. I have only to imagine a door, a door old and good, like in the kitchen of my childhood, with an iron latch and bolt. There is no room so walled up that it will not open with such a trusty door, if you have but the strength to insinuate it.”

“I prepare my portrait for my woman to hang on a wall when I die.she says: Is there a wall to hang it on?I say: We'll build a room for it. Where? In any house.”

“My hero finally found me in that too-high tower, rescued me from it's cold walls, set me down among free men and bolted.Freedom, with all it's possibilities, just feels cold and lonely. I want to go back to my tower. I need those walls. I need the protection.The walls were always my true plus-one. ”

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”

“Depressed, I gazed at the wall behind Ivy. Swell. I was going to have to look at a stuffed mink nailed to the wall all night.”