He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly. She was crying with relief he says, it was like as if a door had been unlocked and she'd been let outside, she said to me I'm safe now. He waits, and he says this kid, when it's born, you mustn't ever let it think it's anything other than a gift and a blessing, do you hear me?

People seem to be losing their sense of boundaries more and more, what people are willing to put up on the internet, especially blogs. People seem to assume that only their friends are going to read it but anyone in the world could read it at any time.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published.

If nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.

there are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home.