People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore.

...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.

[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.