“it was like trying to push a pancake through a chain link fence”

“Did I want to pack hard or soft? Silicone?”

“make pretend ashes out of burned photographs of him”

“Standing in the cold. Seeing his family as a stranger would.”

“we are all of us, once we’ve drawn first breath, dying”

“Yesterday, I wasn’t sure I could be your mom anymore”

“hiss and wheeze then silent for four years until”

“Home in a way geography does not understand”

“These men are fucking soft. The girls are all saying yes”

“A teenaged soldier pointed his rifle at us just after we passed a steaming volcano”

“he couldn’t bear to return to jail for unpaid child support”

“my father decided to end his life, in a Best Western motel off the highway”

“remember when we were roommates of Despair?”

“the only way to get out of the maze was to keep on turning farther to the right”

“My fervent love for the family jewels does not mean”

“He would die soon if I didn’t get him out.”

“women who want me to participate in some rape fantasy role”

“just a feeling of not knowing what just happened to me”

“we must look inward at the wilderness”

“It will make you want what you do not want and fool you into loving it”