“Cicadas bury themselves in small mouthsof the tree's hollow, lie against the bark tongues like amulets,though it is I who pray I might shake off this skin and be raisedfrom the ground again. I have nothingto confess. I don't yet know that I possessa body built for love. When the wind grazesits way toward something colder, you, too, will be changed. One life abradesanother, rough cloth, expostulation.When I open my mouth, I am like an insect undressing itself.”

“When I started to learn how to read, I discovered the same kind of power. I could create an environment that I didn't have, and I could order this environment in the way that I couldn't in my actual life. Then, when I learned to write, I learned that I could do this not only for myself, but for other people. I could create whole things that were believable, at least to myself, at that point. And in this way, I began to wield an authority and a power that I had not had before. In other words, every child goes through this. Some pick football and some pick the library. I picked the library.”

“People say 'Hofmann has different styles'. I have not. I have different moods; I am not two days the same man.”

“Winds shake the leaves and for a moment I smell smoke. I concentrate on the scent, but it vanishes into the aroma of rain and tree bark, the way one life can collapse into another and different people can stir within the same body, like bats thrashing inside a secret hollow.”

“In that moment, I wanted to cut out all my sins from my body and lay them down upon the earth before you. Like pieces of bark they are rough and dead, once clutching onto my very skin, all a part of me. You make me want to strip myself bare and lay myself out to you, I want you to see all my flaws, I want you to know I am not beautiful, yet all the while wanting you to take me anyway. I am composed of things that are dead, I am not a tree, I do not give life, I am just bark, flaws, stitched together with hope for something more. I wish for love, I wish for more.”

“I was like a trashcan. I took everything.”

“I DO have a plan! Just...not a good one...”