“Old elbows," she told me. "A woman's elbows always give her age away.”

“All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell," he says, and he is talking as if he is talking only to me. "Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.”

“When I write, I can be heard. And known. But nobody has to look at me. Nobody has to see me at all.”

“Sometimes there is nothing to hold me together.”

“But really, if you ask me, there is only one kid of plot. One. Stuff happens. That's it.”

“It occurred to me that a lot of beauty has to do with believing it yourself. That half of what we see is just the way it is presented.”

“I am like a leaf on a river, riding along the top of the water, not quite floating, not quite drowning. So I can't stop, and I can't control the direction I am going. I can feel the water, but I never know which way I am heading.But I might feel lucky this day and avoid the sticks and branches scratching and pulling at me. ”