“As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.”

The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave.

You’re the perfect girl’, he said, rubbing his chin. ‘You expect nothing.

He was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

Kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

The stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader’s brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.

If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

She is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.

That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.

Psychology claims that when you can’t sleep at night, you are actually awake in someone’s dream.

When you’re wide awake say it for goodness sake, it’s gonna be a great day.

I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

Our heart often times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.

That’s when the magic happens- when everyone else is asleep and you’re awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it could be. Make the most of those moments.

Dancing of the autumn leaves on the surface of a lake is a dream we see when we are awake!

Wise man is the rooster of the universe: He awakens the unawake!