“Tipsy?” She laughed an ugly laugh. “Tipsy? I hope it makes me drunk. I would like to be drunk and forget all of this.” She drank again, a slow train of warmth lighting in her veins and stealing through her body until even her finger tips tingled. What a blessed feeling, this kindly fire. It seemed to penetrate even her ice-locked heart and strength came coursing back into her body.
"Last night I took up a razor, that I might open my own throat with it. How simple this would be: a flick of the wrist and the life would pour from my body, the room would dim, and I would have my rest. I am not afraid to die, and have not been for some time now. And yet I found I couldn’t perform the gesture, knowing you are still drawing breath. If you yourself were passed, it would be nothing, but the knowledge that you remain lulled my hand. I will live until you come back to me, then. If you do not come back, then I will die waiting. This is my pledge to you."
This is the strangeness of memory: in recalling a moment, I am instantly reminded of all the details that elude me, and feel myself making them up even as I say “this is certainly true; and this, and this.” But my first sighting of you has never been vulnerable to such corruption. I remember everything.
I did not understand the people who were my size or even the larger ones. At home, or away from it, people seemed out of reach. Thus I hid in fairy tales and read them daily like prayerbook. Any book was closer than a person. I did not even like my dolls for they resembled people. I stepped on their faces because they resembled me.
— Anne Sexton
What did time matter to him now? What did it ever matter? Well, perhaps it was necessary in the movement of things, men and materials, for instance. For cooking things correctly. For schools and weddings and church services and going to work. But what did it matter out here?
— Michael Blake, Dances With Wolves
There'll be the breaking of the ancient
Western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see your woman
Hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
And the white man dancin'