Writing becomes herculean, almost futile these days--if I say anything now, it'll become a pack of lies, rumors, a testimony testifying to blindness and hubris.

...

"The strongest work for me embodies contradiction, which allows for emotional tension and the ability to contain opposing ideas.'--Martin Puryear, sculptor.

...

Again, a new transformation takes place; shaped by school, chance encounters with specters of my past, ideas rather than romance--what new skin will I and my fiction take?

...

If you had to leave tonight, without the promise of return, what would you take with you?

...

Surrounded by French books and French magazines and French conversation in a Parisian bookstore, I sorely missed English words, words like home. I missed opening up any book and being able to comprehend the story that unraveled, sentence by sentence, in my grasping hands.

Perhaps this (temporary--temporary dislocation is, after all, the privilege of a tourist) loss illuminates what I would take with me if I ever had to leave tonight, without the promise of return.

...

And if I was the Winter Queen, I, too, would steal Phil's brother away.

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