Unlike her, nothing had yet happened to him.

We’d die here, old together, safe with each other’s secrets. We were each other’s juvenilia.

I started thinking of my absentee diamond. My thumb and little finger kept reaching for their pet and sidekick.

He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they’ve yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises – in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself.

Truth always leaves a pleasure asking questions.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they’ll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you’ve changed into that very simple shape.

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know.

I think Walt Whitman went to the help wanted section and found a squib that said "Wanted: National Poet." And he was innocent enough to believe there really was such a job. And if he could just write a poem that incorporated everything he felt and suspected and hoped for from America that he would have the position.