As for you, you are alive. But it's not the same as living.

opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.

Tragedy alters everything.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

Readers are fools. They believe all writing is autobiographical. And so it is, but not in the way they think. The writer's life needs time to rot away before it can be used to nourish a work of fiction. it must be allowed to decay.

When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.

The funeral was over, at last I could cry. Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized. They would have to stay in forever now.