“A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.”

“The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.”

“I loved: and in the morning sky,
A magic castle upward grew!”

“Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.”

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”

“Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with”

“The sun shone on: the shade of the awning vanished in the hot, white, shadowless midday. In that blaze of heat I was loving Paris as never before.
And there sitting opposite me, stretching himself luxuriously in the sun, his eyes lazily examining his half-empty drink, was Larry, the one I loved the best … sensationally uninterested.”

“Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.”

“I considered myself white, having grown up essentially American but with Filipino parents. I don’t speak with an accent and I barely speak Tagalog. So, for most of my life, I looked at the world as a ‘white’ person.”

“I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin.”