Date: 1999

"The cactus where your heart should be / Has lovely little flowers / So though it's always pricking me / My ardor never sours."

— Stephin Merritt (b. February 9, 1965)

Date: 1999

"Love is wrapped around my heart / Like a boa constrictor, babe."

— Stephin Merritt (b. February 9, 1965)

Date: 1999

"Caution, to prevent electric shock / Do not remove cover / No user-serviceable parts inside / Refer servicing to qualified / Service personnel" // Let this be the epitaph for my heart

— Stephin Merritt (b. February 9, 1965)

Date: 1999

"Who will mourn the passing of my heart? / Will its little droppings climb the pop chart?"

— Stephin Merritt (b. February 9, 1965)

Date: June 19, 2000

"The record she'd given me was playing in my mind, and I kept trying to shut it off."

— Packer, ZZ (b. 1973)

Date: June 19, 2000

"The words slid from my brain, and knotted in my stomach."

— Packer, ZZ (b. 1973)

Date: February 20, 2000

"I sometimes fancy that various archetypal situations circled tirelessly in Hitchcock's mind, like whales in a tank at the zoo."

— Ebert, Roger (1942-2013)

Date: 2001

"But loss is a current: the coolness of one side of a wet finger held up, the faint hiss in your ears at midnight, water sliding over the dam at the back of your mind, memory unremembering itself."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)

Date: 2001

"Wind, ocean, fire: the things we like to liken our passions to don't break, can't stop."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)

Date: 2001

"And in between these partings and reunions, like lovers, mind and body dream of what they might do together."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)