Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me, that Henry could win the lottery at any time at all; that he has never bothered to do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate. "Clare? Earth to Clare..." "Thank you," I say, too abruptly.
Audrey NiffeneggerThere was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.
Audrey Niffenegger...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.
Audrey NiffeneggerI breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile.
Audrey NiffeneggerI sleep all day. Noises flit around the house- garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. [...] It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.
Audrey NiffeneggerThe hardest lesson is Clareโs solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; Iโve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clareโs face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. Iโve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.
Audrey Niffenegger