“I hover over myselfWatching.Mind and body separated,Each in controlAs though there are two puppeteersWorking the strings of my marionette self.”

“If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings and loops. Each life is one short word slowly uttered.”

“Tinsley felt like a puppeteer playing with her marionettes, holding all the strings.”

“Life and death come and go like marionettes dancing on a table. Once the string is cut, they easily collapse.”

“....with the morbid realisation that his sexual being was a dull thing, a lifeless thing, a mass-produced marionette with chipped paint and fraying strings”

“Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.”