I Watched Her For A Long Time,

I Wandered Through The Stacks, Running My Hands Along The Spines Of The Books On The Shelves, They Reminded Me Of Cultured Or Opinionated Guests At A Wonderful Party, Whispering To Each Other.

Aquamarines Grew With Emeralds, Claire Told Me. But Emeralds Were Fragile And Always Broke Into Smaller Pieces, While Aquamarines Were Stronger, Grew In Huge Crystals Without Any Trouble, So They Weren't Worth As Much. It Was The Emerald That Didn't Break That Was The Really Valuable Thing.

If Evil Means To Be Self-motivated, To Be The Center Of One’s Own Universe, To Live On One’s Own Terms, Then Every Artist, Every Thinker, Every Original Mind, Is Evil.

I Nodded. A Man's World. But What Did It Mean? That Men Whistled And Stared And Yelled Things At You, And You Had To Take It, Or You Get Raped Or Beat Up? A Man's World Meant Places Men Could Go But Not Women. It Meant They Had More Money,and Didn't Have Kids, Not The Way Women Did, To Look After Every Second. And It Meant That Women Loved Them More Than They Loved The Women, That They Could Want Something With All Their Hearts, And Then Not.

That Kind Of Tenderness Couldn't Be Permitted To Last. You Only Got A Taste, Enough To Know What Perfection Meant, And Then You Paid For It The Rest Of Your Life. Like The Guy Chained To A Rock, Who Stole Fire. The Gods Made An Eagle Eat His Liver For All Eternity. You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.