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"At the lot's far edge lies the week-old roadkill, its eye socket filled with warm Coca-Cola, the act of a girl who, bored on her way from school, poured her drink into that finite dark of sight-less visions."

"Ποτέ της δεν με χώνεψε. Γεννημένη γεροντοκόρη ήταν. Και να πεις πως ήταν άσχημη; Τρωγόταν το μουτζό, ψέματα δεν μπορώ να πω. Λύσσαγε όμως σαν γεννήθηκα, με πέρναγε κοντά δέκα χρόνια, την είχανε σκαρώσει πριν από την Κατοχή, το '39, και την έλεγα προπολεμικιά για να τη φουρκίζω."

"In their world, aberrations were as much a part of nature as grace. It was not for them to expel or annihilate it. They would no more run Sula out of town than they would kill the robins that brought her back, for in their secret awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they sang about. They knew quite well that He had four, and that the fourth explained Sula."

"And I listen. The poet speaks. The poet proclaims. But the poet also listens. A bird or two. The air that once again stakes its claim as lord and master of the space between the leaves. The thin whistle the world makes, at the bottom of every ear."

"But Yukari was right I thought. After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too . . . It was the me with different clothes and speech rhythms that was smiling. Who was it that my friends were talking to?"

"Glassmaking has long been known in the Orient, but the craft never developed as in the West. Great progress has been made, however, in the manufacture of pottery. We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artefact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity."

"They both sat then and the woman returned to the work of deveining shrimp. Twelve rings, two on three fingers of each hand, snatched light from the ceiling fixture and seemed to elevate her task from drudgery to sorcery."

"To paint a picture of our embrace, I'd almost have to use her blood and guts."

"Sometimes writing was like finding a parking spot: Just as I was about to give up I managed to achieve a perfect fit, thanks to a bit of skillful maneuvering. Other times it was like examining food that had been left sitting out for so long that ants and cockroaches had gotten to it. On other occasions it was like a major year-end cleaning where I was forced to throw something away"

"I threw open the balcony door and stepped outside to cool off. I hoped to catch a glimpse of other kindred souls standing naked out on their own balconies. That's how it is, writing a serious literary work.

Even if this book is neither popular nor serious, at least it's sensational. Five cents a word.

It's about getting a diploma and writing."

"In the postmodern age, horror is not a holocaust, but something far more intimate and painstaking. I've reread some of my journal entries and get the sense horror may actually be a metaphor for something else . . . The category was les poulets and the subcategory — new to me — la vaccination" (55-56)

"Oh, the dream circles me that you might give up the accolades of men and come here, vanish with me among my fugitive leaves."

Kinda puzzled, kinda gagged atp.
Apple orchard>>>

This is slowly annihilating me.

In the square below: a nun, on fire,
runs silently towards her god —

Open, he says.
She opens.

"The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar . . . What we have in common are the words at our backs. The ideographs for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance - not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words - 'chink' words and 'gook' words too - that they do not fit on my skin."

In the darkness, she spoke to me. You are hungry, she said. You must eat. You must feed. Do you know who I am? she asked. I am exiled, as you are, from Paradise. You are mine.