At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.

A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?

[I]t may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering.

Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.

He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints.