Sexy Means Loving Someone You Donot Know.

She Has Given Birth To Vagabonds. She Is The Keeper Of All These Names And Numbers Now, Numbers She Once Knew By Heart, Numbers And Addresses Her Children No Longer Remember.

But She Has Gathered That Americans, In Spite Of Their Public Declarations Of Affection, In Spite Of Their Miniskirts And Bikinis, In Spite Of Their Hand-holding On The Street And Lying On Top Of Each Other On The Cambridge Common, Prefer Their Privacy.

The Sky Was Different, Without Color, Taut And Unforgiving. But The Water Was The Most Unforgiving Thing, Nearly Black At Times, Cold Enough, I Knew, To Kill Me, Violent Enough To Break Me Apart. The Waves Were Immense, Battering Rocky Beaches Without Sand. The Farther I Went, The More Desolate It Became, More Than Any Place I'd Been, But For This Very Reason The Landscape Drew Me, Claimed Me As Nothing Had In A Long Time.

The First Sentence Of A Book Is A Handshake, Perhaps An Embrace.

Gogol Remembers Having To Do The Same Thing When He Was Younger, When His Grandparents Died...he Remembers, Back Then, Being Bored By It, Annoyed At Having To Observe A Ritual No One Else He Knew Followed, In Honor Of People He Had Seen Only A Few Times In His Life...now, Sitting Together At The Kitchen Table At Six-thirty Every Evening, His Father's Chair Empty, This Meatless Meal Is The Only Thing That Seems To Make Sense.