So you've been gone a couple days,' Alison said. 'Hmm, what'd you miss...A celebrity did drugs. Politicians disagreed. A different celebrity wore a bikini that revealed a bodily imperfection. A team won a sporting event, but another team lost.

They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father.

This is it. I can't even not smoke anymore

Maybe life is not about accomplishing some bullshit markers.

Nothing really ever happens like you imagine it will.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.

I thought you hung the moon.