You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.

There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.

I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading.

Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface.

We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.

I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.