“What could be more dry than a statistic? More indifferent than a number? To be treated like a number, in common parlance, is to become an entirely replaceable part — an object lesson in depersonalization.”

Two is solid and tingly, like the Liberty Bell….Eight is rough and hard like a stone, and 10 is smooth like a pebble on the beach. Nine…seems ready not only to ring but to shatter and burst like a fruit. [quoting Richard Friedberg]

–“Mind Over Matter, Conversations with the Cosmos”, by K.C. Cole.

But you know what really broke my heart? When you described yourself to me to make sure. Because of how you somehow diminished yourself into one single sentence, in parentheses on top of that (“Quite tall, long curly messy hair, glasses…”). If you really feel yourself to be in parentheses — at least let me squeeze into them as well and let the whole world remain outside. Let the world only be the element outside the parentheses that will multiply us on the inside.
–from “Be My Knife” by David Grossman.

Yearning, and bittersweet, and oh so very, very sexy. It’s almost hard to read it in public.