If I Had A Camera,' I Said,

She Was Gone, And All That Was Left Was The Space You'd Grown Around Her, Like A Tree That Grows Around A Fence. For A Long Time, It Remained Hollow. Years, Maybe. And When At Last It Was Filled Again, You Knew That The New Love You Felt For A Woman Would Have Been Impossible Without Alma. If It Weren't For Her, There Would Never Have Been An Empty Space, Or The Need To Fill It.

She [my Mother] Was The Force Around Which Our World Turned. My Mother Was Propelled Through The Universe By The Brute Force Of Reason. She Was The Judge In All Our Arguments. One Disapproving Word From Her Was Enough To Send Us Off To Hide In A Corner, Where We Would Cry And Fantasize Our Own Martyrdom. And Yet. One Kiss Could Restore Us To Princedom. Without Her, Our Lives Would Dissolve Into Chaos.

I Read Differently Now, More Painstakingly, Knowing I Am Probably Revisiting The Books I Love For The Last Time. (245)

I Think In The Whole Field Of Questions About What We Take To Be "real," One Of Those Questions Is About The Self. When You Talk About The Self We're Always Talking About Whether It's A Construction And It's A Construction We're Always In The Process Of Working On. I Don't Think That Work Ever Ends, To Some Degree.

I’ve Always Liked The Feeling Of Traveling Light; There Is Something In Me That Wants To Feel I Could Leave Wherever I Am, At Any Time, Without Any Effort. The Idea Of Being Weighed Down Made Me Uneasy, As If I Lived On The Surface Of A Frozen Lake And Each New Trapping Of Domestic Life - A Pot, A Chair, A Lamp - Threatened To Be The Thing That Sent Me Through The Ice.