“They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.”

“The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was o...”

“From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the corners of her mouth, left one, right one; then ...”

“I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliat...”

“speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.”

“You all right?" he said again.I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deser...”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”

“Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart.”

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”