The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.

People, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.

Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.

It's like a fugue of evaded responsibility.

Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.