"I accept your condemnation," I said.

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.

I don't believe in writer's block.

Speak up,' says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. 'My hearing's not so good.' 'I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.' Liz turns to Thandi. 'I thought you said you didn't remember how you got the hole in your head.' Thandi apologizes. 'I just remembered.' 'Shot in the head!' Florence-scratchy-voice says. 'Oy, that's rough.' 'Aw, it's nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I'm from,' Thandi says. 'WHAT?' asks Myrna with the moustache. 'Say it toward my left ear, that's the good one.' 'I SAID, "IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL,"' Thandi yells/

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

Sometimes things seem so unbearable in the middle of the night, don't they? In the middle of the night, we're all such children.