I told him about the way they get to know you. Not the way people do, the way they flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn't a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction - dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there's not an end to it.

It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.

It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.

I leave a lot out when I tell the truth

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.