We have bottled all the stars this evening, my young friend.

He responded a few minutes later. Okay. I wrote back. Okay. He responded: Oh, my God, stop flirting with me!

Here's my answer to the very real existential crisis that grips me midway through everything I've ever tried to do: I think stories help us fight the nihilistic urges that constantly threaten to consume us.

Of course, sweetie," his mom said. "We'll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you're so so special, Colin, and you can't possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy-" And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of.

And I don't really have anyone upon whom I want to rain down my wrath," I said, because in truth I didn't. I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodeling.

Do you know why I left America, Lidewij? So that I would never again have to encounter Americans." "But you are an American." "Incurably so, it seems.

I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.