The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This is the future as we see it. The swerve and the static. The confidence and the doubt.

The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

He's at ease, his body sculpted to the music, his shoulder searching the other shoulder, his right toe knowing the left knee, the height, the depth, the form, the control, the twist of his wrist, the bend of his elbow, the tilt of his neck, notes digging into arteries, and he is in the air now, forcing the legs up beyond muscular memory, one last press of the thighs, an elongation of form, a loosening of human contour, he goes higher and is skyheld.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin. [...] All I wanted was to make my life thrilling for a while: to take the oridinary objects of my days and make a different argument out of them, no obligations to my past.