She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.