It’s hard being left behind. (…) It’s hard to be the one who stays.

Martin said, “It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?” Julia nodded. “There’s pain where she ought to...

[Who are the artists you admire, Surrealist or otherwise?]Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those are...

But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

I’m living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there’s a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I...

But I don’t want to just believe it, I want it to be true.

I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn’t like it, but it’s true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving...

It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.

Dream are different than real life but important too.

I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming through the window, and shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze.””And then you saw the...

Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.

He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

. . .Tell me, Clare: why on earth would a lovely girl like you want to marry Henry?’Everything in the room seems to hold its breath. Henry stiffens but doesn’t say anything. I lean forward...

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning....

Why is love intensified by absence?

That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living.

…and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hand on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I...

He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and...

The Garden Under Snow “Now the garden is under snow a blank page our footprints write onclare who was never minebut always belonged to herselfSleeping Beautya crystalline blanketthis is her springthis is her sleeping/awakeningshe is...