watching the tiny bubbles flea-jump out the top of her glass

I once spent an entire night in a hotel in New York looking across the way into someone's apartment where nothing was happening but daily life, a phone call, television watching, staring into the fridge. Seeing how those strangers lived over that small distance and in absolute silence moved me deeply.

Total intimacy is a myth; that said, a particular kind of loneliness can be both beautiful and fruitful.

I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older.

We think of stories a lot of the time as being horizontal texts, beginning to end. But I love the idea of having little vertical spikes in the story, too.

All she had ahead of her was the cold water, the slow ballet.