Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.

Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

When I see people talking on the internet about me or my work it's almost always more a description of themselves and so I never really think of myself as anything more than just who I always was.

Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it’s just the opposite. After that, you’re either a liar or a fool or a villain.

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.

some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.