Long week. Long month. Long life.

At the end, we brought her to New York, where I was living, for a series of experimental tortures that increased the misery of her days without increasing the number of them.

You're not boring. You've got to stop saying that, or people will start believing you.

And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I've been smart longer.

The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.

And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.

She fell apart because that's what happens.