In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it is vital to remember that our gods don't choose us, we choose them.

For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.

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.

How can you read and talk at the same time?” I asked. “Well, I usually can’t, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.

Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.

I like the strings. I always have. Because that's how it feels. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is, I think. We're not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me to imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well – but never quite perfectly, you know?

As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.