All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. - Margaret Atwood

The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all kinds. This is why they have bidets.

I did not know that the rules about these things were different if you were female. I did not know that "poetess" was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not know that to be told I had transcended my gender would be considered a compliment. I didn't know — yet — that black was compulsory. All of that was in the future. When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet — the many, many reasons why it could not be written by me.

A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.