“It is so hot that even with the windows open, I am suffocating. I kept a frog in a box once. The box had a lid so he wouldn't jump out. It was during a summer like this. When everyone moves slowly because the air is too thick to breathe. I forgot about the frog for a few days. It was dead by the time I remembered.Tonight, as I lie in bed, I start to cry because I once killed a frog. It's just a little cry, and I stop myself quickly.”

“I made it to Boxing Day because I was too miserable to hang myself. I lie. I made it to Boxing Day because I was too cowardly to hang myself.”

“Last night I fell asleep quickly, into a place beyond sleep, deep and silent, the place I imagine caterpillars go to turn into butterflies.”

“When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.”

“Tonight I walked around the pond scaring frogs; a couple of them jumped off, going, in effect, eek, and most grunted, and the pond was still. But one big frog, bright green like a poster-paint frog, didn't jump, so I waved my arm and stamped to scare it, and it jumped suddenly, and I jumped, and then everything in the pond jumped, and I laughed and laughed.”

“I am, indeed, pure Frog, but at the same time I am a thing that stands for a world of un-Frog.”

“Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.”