I'm all alone, fuming at myself, waving a great flagof failure.

One more year and I will be closer to wherever I'm going.

Stella scribbledin thick black textaacross half the pagesof my best storybook, filled with people who venturedwhere their hearts took them.Beautiful worlds beyond mine.

The true test is wonwhen being togetherwithout saying a wordis everything.

There're three reasonspeople get away from here:gone good, gone bad orgone dead.

I'm justthe reason they married.Mum saysI was a surprise.Dad saysI was an accident.Truth is ...I am their mistake.

Then she smiles, like it'sthe first time she's seen sunafter a decade of winters.

Growing up changes morethan playground gamesand body shapes.

I want out of this place.With no reminders."It stings -sulphur tearsin cinnamon rain.

Instead, she's as stillas a leaf-littered pond, dark water evaporating, waiting desperately for rain.

i miss my brother likethe sea would miss saltif that were taken away.

... we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people ...

The hurt that troubled children create is never greater than the hurt they feel.

Hotel Conundrum: The continental breakfast. What is it that makes continents so shitty at providing an adequate breakfast?

The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?

Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.

I am a good mother and I feel proud about it.

We were created to be woman and man and make kids.

The world should commit Israel to withdraw from our territories and stop occupation and aggression, and allow the Palestinian people to establish their independent state.

What man, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox of a donkey or to hang upon a cross?

If you're not ready to fall, you're not ready to hurdle.