From Joyce Carol Oates: "I'll Take You There"
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London & New York: Fourth Estate, 2002.


p.104:

The ceiling [of the lecture hall] was extremely high, and water-stained;
fluorescent tubing hummed and quivered overhead like racing thoughts.


p.129:

My so-called personality had always been a costume I put on fumblingly,
and removed with vague, perplexed fingers; it shifted depending on
circumstances, like unfastened cargo in the hold of a ship. ... [three
sentences] ... [NP] The personalities I assembled never lasted
long. Like quilts carelessly sewn together, I periodically fell apart.