One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it’s easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

My knees buckled, I went down to the floor. I cried in English, I cried in French, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world.

What else can you do?

Love you

But can you do any more tricks

No

I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.

Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angryfor punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.

You don´t know anything. Call me when you´ve cured AIDS.

He seemed to have all the time in the world for this, my God, did he have time. I have never taken such care with anything. That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like dringing relaxing tea. When I dring relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I’m in a contest for who can dring relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I’m in a hot tub with some other people and we’re all looking up at the stars, I’ll be the first to say, It’s so beautiful here. Thesooner you say, It’s so beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I’m getting overheated.

We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired-as furniture sanders-we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone’s job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.

I’m not sure I could care for a pet. I travel a lot. But you could get a very little pet that wasn’t very hungry. I knew all about those things that weren’t very hungry; my life was full of them. I didn’t want any more weaklings who were activated by water and heat but had no waste and were so small that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness. If I was going to bring something new into my home, it would be a big starving thing. But I could not do this. I didn’t tell the boy, because II was just his dog-believer.

She never inquired, but she never recoiled either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling. Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.