veronica

He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done__lmost killinng me was one of those thingss__nd another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al.

They were different colors: the right one blue, the left green. And her face in the light of the candle on the table startled me at first, just as it had in the icy night air. After seeing it on the street, I was afraid I had only imagined it: a still, luminous face with a silvery sheen. Finely hewn, with a long, straight nose and a wide mouth, it was nearly identical to another face, which I had photographed years before. Not on a person, bu on the fragment of a frieze I found in some ruins near Verona, The frieze, which depicted a band of musicians, had once been shadowed beneath a cornice high on the temple of Mercury, god of magic. Belonging to one of the musicians, it was a riveting face - like a puzzle that could not be solved - which I had never found, or expected to find, on a living woman.

It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt."We stay in the silence and the loneliness of the otherwise empty dormitory for a few more minutes, and I try to let her words work themselves into me.

See, I can talk to the pretty man like a real grown up if I try hard enough.

Pretending to care what men think is an art. It takes moments to learn, but lifetimes to master. I__ like to believe I__ an expert.

Stupid. Why do people want to pretendthat death is sleep? It isn__. It isn__

If someone offers you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it. I know that without having learned it from anyone.