We were fools and now we were driving to our deaths in a rental car. Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late

No one’s forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You’re at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you’re staring at a screen, searching for strangers in Dubai.

I often cannot believe the things I do.

I've purposely stayed away from reading much about postmodern theory, and most everything I have read just bored me to tears. I don't think anybody's written about it, or very few have, with any verve.

My parents told me they were going to kill me at least a thousand times growing up. "I'm gonna kill you," and then they'd whack me on the side of the head or whatever. And "What's wrong with you?" And "I'm gonna lock you up," and "I'm gonna throw you out the window," and "I'm gonna kill you." You know, all these things that you say in the heat of a normal chaotic household.

I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hollow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep.

There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana