In reference works, as in sin, omission is as bad as willful misbehavior.

Unrequited love–plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing–turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.

Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything’s changed….there’s a hole. It’s person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.

I come from food the way some people come from money. Food was the medium I grew up in, what we talked about, what shaped our days.

In reference works, as in sin, omission is as bad as willful misbehavior.

It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing.