“The tightest, most self-involved knot is connected to strings that go everywhere.” p.273
“The desire to describe voice, gesture, skin color, is a desire to eat, take over, make into part of a pattern. I am happy every time to see a writer fail at this. I am happy every time to see real personhood resist our tricks. I am happy to see bodies insist that they are not shut up in this book, they are elsewhere. The tomb is empty, rejoice, he is not here.” p. 297
“What are the commandments?”
“One is that I am the only zoo animal currently living who has the key to my own cage. I can open it and go outside.” p.303
re: Emily Dickinson “People assume that the shutting-up made her smaller. But locking yourself up can be a way to shrink the castle down to your size, and to expand your body toward the wider limits of the walls, until you are rooted at the foundation, see sideways out the glass, and do your highest thinking when the smoke leaves the chimney. And still, through the window, you can send out sweets. Emily did not show her face to the children, only the hands and arms that set down the poems. What if she wanted simply to reveal, and not to be exposed? What counts as hiding and what as devoted contemplation?” p. 305
