All we have is the story we tell.

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.

Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of just where she is.

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.