“But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.”

“Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.”

“Stop calling your akri your daddy. It makes my wings droop. (Xirena)
My akri is my daddy. He said so and it is so, so your wings can droop all they want, ‘cause it won’t change anything! (Simi)”

“Your letter became before I was up this morning – Yes nice to get. I recognize two of the drawings you speak of – Number one is the first of the dozen or more you speak of – number 2 came next The last – It didn't quite satisfy me so I tried again – the last one was so much worse than the one you like that I thought I had just about worn the idea out so quit... You ask me what I did with the rest of myself when I made number 2 -... I sat up almost all night one night this week and made the most infernally ugly little shape you ever saw – I wanted to break it when I got through – but didn't then next afternoon when I had time to look at it, it amused me so that I didn't – really its laughable – it's so ugly – and still some way it's quite beautiful – I don't know – I may break it up – or I may try to cast it just for fun – I have another idea that I'm in an awful stew to model – I am going to get a lot of patience so I can make all the little do-dangles I want to and won't have to break one up so I can make another – I want to make a big one..”

“In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.”

“Rose. Roza. Open your eyes." I've never heard heard his voice so strained, so frantic. "Don't go to sleep on me. Not yet.”

“I get so much mail from young girls who say, 'I look up to you, you're not as skinny as everyone else, I think you're beautiful' … So when they say that my body is 'ugly' and 'disgusting,' what does that make those girls feel like?”

“Bricks should be made in Spring or Autumn so that they may dry uniformly.”

“And so it fell upon a day,
(That is, it never rose again)”

“Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.”