About my boss, Tyler tells me, if I'm really angry, I should go to the post office and fill out a change-of-address card and have all his mail forwarded to Rugby, North Dakota.

She drank a glass of wine and looked for something new to ruin with her lack of talent.

Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren't meant to get old. Marla lies down on her bed and undoes the tie on her bathrobe, and says our culture has made death something wrong. Old animals should be an unnatural exception. Freaks.

Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.

If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.

Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.

Some stories, she’d say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be.