“I understood it in my bones. Longing made the music bigger.”

“It was long past midnight. Laura's music played on. It was composed in the language of stars, tinkling in a crystal pool suspended from constellations. She used chimes now and then, the chimes that...”

“I meditated on my childhood, vague and distant before high school, where Laura still flickered only on the edge of things.”

“Our past would dissolve. We would move on from each other and from the ghosts of our youth.”

“My loves have always been seared with this singing, this singing written by death, the way some lands have always been crippled by war.”

“I inherited this longing. I was addicted to it. And so I was at home with those who wanted and never had enough. I was at home in the places that could never be. The places found only in dreams.”

“A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet.”

“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”

“... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.”

“Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing amo...”

“, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”

“Id forgotten how enlivening it could feel, seeing clearly and far. Aridity frees light. It also unleashes grandeur. The earth here wasnt cloaked in forest, nor draped in green. Green was pastoral, ...”

“I understood it in my bones. Longing made the music bigger.”

“I am a memory house for those I have lost, those I no longer know.”

“There is the body of history ever atop of us, and the body of memory rustling within us. Between the two, we are crushed.”