“If you don't know the kind of person I amand I don't know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.... And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.”

“If you don't know the kind of person I amand I don't know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.”

“A Ritual to Read to Each OtherIf you don’t know the kind of person I amand I don’t know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,a shrug that lets the fragile sequence breaksending with shouts the horrible errors of childhoodstorming out to play through the broken dyke.And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,a remote important region in all who talk:though we could fool each other, we should consider---lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.For it is important that awake people be awake,or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”

“And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. I love the feeling of Peter's story, someone may say. It had something... a sense of I don't know... there's a loving kind of you know... I can't exactly describe it....It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”

“Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.”

“Miss Remy, I don't know what kind of signals you are trying to give me, but the more you challenge me, the sexier I find you.”