Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole.

A book is actually a place, a place where we, as adults, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word to image, connecting these images to memories, dreams, and larger ideas. Television, film, even the stage play, have already been imagined for us, but the book, in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it.

I was getting close to thirty and was trying on the idea of becoming more mature. I was reading more. I had gone out and bought a lot of shirts.

We have fun acting like this, acting like we are incredibly offended. Really, we are just bored to tears with everything.

Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.

People are just greedy animals, after all.

What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.