“She was not unacquainted with these sudden shocking illuminations, but they were among those experiences which are ever-new—like love, orgasms, or barking your shin. You never really got used to them.

This one wasn’t the light that cleaves the darkness, the one bright shining truth that slashes through the murk and banishes all doubt, the divine radiance that heals all wounds before plodding Father Time gets his boots on. She had no faith in those counterfeit notions, though it wasn’t the thing itself that was false. It was the yearning for it—the yearning that must cleave to something (anything) because it was bright, not because it was true; that confused letting go with running away; that believed healing was the mere dead absence of pain.”