“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”

“She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.”

“...a habit that had become one of those necessary things for the night... surely a body-friendly if not familiar-lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuissance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages nor discusts you, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet.”

“Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there. By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.”

“The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”

“She became, and her process of becoming was like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her; acquired virtues that were easy to maintain; assigned herself a role in the scheme of things; and harked back to simpler times for gratification.”

“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”