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

I didn't use anybody's story. I used the context and the structure of the situation. People were so, so desperate to tell their story and begin to digest their experience - like turning it into a story - that after the fist few weeks I could go with a pad and pencil and take notes. People didn't seem at all bothered by that.

With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out. "Long-term or short-term?" she asks. Both. "Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after." Really? "Really," she says. "So don't sweat it.

There are worse things you can do to people you love than kill them.

Yes, I kidnapped that Lindberg baby.

Let me be the ring leader in your guilt gang-bang.

I want to find something else, unknowable, some place that's not on the map. A real adventure.