Although She Was Giddy With Exhaustion, Sleep

Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

...the Men Eyed Her With The Automatic Mix Of Curiosity, Lust, And Aesthetic Judgment They Always Gave Young Women, Subject To Object, The Way You'd Stare At An Animal. She Pretended Not To Notice. To Remind Them She Was A Person Was Too Much Effort. Objects Bore No Guilt.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing.

But I Knew One More Thing. That People W Ho Denied Who They Were Or Where They Had Been Were In The Greatest Danger.

I Couldn't Imagine Owning Beauty Like My Mothers. I Wouldn't Dare.