He's just a contact of hers, which is not the same as a friend. While she was in the hospital she decided that most of her friends were really just c… - Margaret Atwood

Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.