And now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky. She was weary of being outdoors, but she was not ready to go in. Was that really all there was in life, indoors or out? Wasn't there somewhere else for people to go?

The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.

We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.

It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and had there been a spare second or two, I might have allowed myself a little nostalgia.

You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.