But death is not freedom. For a moment, it can look like freedom. But then it's death. Anything. Something. Nothing.

healthy, adj. There are times when I'm alone that I think, This is it. This is actually the natural state. All I need are my thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I'm better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it's time to go.

In the next election, I'm voting for your mom to be the next God.

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

You never get involved in the people's lives? The ones you're inhabiting?" I shake my head. "You try to leave the lives the way you found them." "Yeah." "But what about Justin? What made that so different?" "You," I say.

I had forgotten this about love: how the simple things- the turn away, the turn towards- could be so complicated, and how the complicated things- the stolen night, the right words- could be so simple.

You spend so much time, so much effort, trying to hold yourself together. And then everything falls apart anyway.