Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.
It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed.
It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.
With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.
I disconnect the telephone to keep the outside world in it's correct place.
Besides, hysteria is only possible with an audience.