“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“A family is a mystery.”

“Maybe in order to understand sex fully/one has to risk being destroyed by it.”

“...when I thought he loved me, when I thought we were joined not just for breaths time, but for the long continuance, the hard candies of femur and stone, the fastnesses.”

“The Knowing Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise- comaed and woken, we lie a long time looking at each other.I do not know what he sees, but I see eyes of surpassing tenderness and calm, a calm...”

“each hour is a room of shame, and I amswimming, swimming, holding my head up,smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,like being naked with the clothed, or beinga child, having to try to behavewhile hatin...”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”