“Dear Polly,
Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair.
This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can.
Yours ever, Sam.”

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 1.

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

Source: Hunt the Moon

Praying for Time
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)

Ellen DeGeneres, commenting on being called over to sit with Johnny Carson back in 1986

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Sweethearts

Source: City of Ashes