I'm not saying it was your fault. I'm saying it wasn't nice.

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

Leaving feels too good, once you leave.

You know, like when you look in the mirror and the thing you see is not the thing as it really is.

Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.

All along — not only since she left, but for a decade before — I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who — because no one thought she was a person — had no one to really talk to.

Isaac out of surgery. It went well. He's officially NEC. NEC meant "no evidence of cancer." A second text came a few seconds later. I mean, he's blind. So that's unfortunate.