“The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible.”

“The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil's fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.”

“It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”

“Humidity did terrible things to me. I‘d be much prettier if I lived in the desert.”

“I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sky was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.”

“The tip of the burning red sun kissed the sky in the distance as it slowly sank like molasses into another time, its light pooling ahead, a deep, thick red that saturated the dark majestic hues of the night.”