They thought back on the tales that the soldier had told. They remembered Hazel, the gentle Bethlehem donkey, who used the last of her strength helping those who needed her. They remembered the donkey who...

I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back...

I suppose that’s what happens when you make other people’s lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.

Evangeline’s obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.

I would always be lonely, but no more alone.

Yeah, reflections! The same, but different. Like twins – like blood brothers! And when you need something bad done, like punishment or revenge, you’ll just ask me, and I will do it –

I want my life to be mystifying,” she declared, although she didn’t know what she meant.

She doesn’t understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings – they’re helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that’s sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.

My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she’d let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to...

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind’s history must be scored bloody with heartbreak....

We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.

I am dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.