I would rather be dead than not read

It's easier to die if others around you are dying.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.