My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.

For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.

I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.