“in most social talk, most politeness, most literature, most religion, it is as if violence didn’t exist–except as sin, something far away. this is flattering to women. it is also conducive to grace–because the heaviness of fear, the shadowy henchmen selves that fear attaches to us, that fear sees in others, is banished.
where am i in the web of jealousy that trembles at every human movement?
what detectives we have to be.

some memories huddle in a grainy light. what it is is a number of similar events bunching themselves, superimposing themselves, to make a false memory, a collage, a mental artifact. within the boundaries of one such memory one plunges from year to year, is small and helpless, is a little older: one remembers it all but it is nothing that happened, that clutch of happenings, of associations, those gifts and ghosts of a meaning.
i can, if i concentrate, whiten the light–or yellow-whiten it, actually–and when the graininess goes, it is suddenly one afternoon.”