Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it.

Once there are good sentences on the page, I can feel a loyalty to them and start following their logic, and take refuge from myself.

Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.

He had a happy canine way of seeking approval without seeming insecure.

His tiredness hurt so much it kept him awake.

Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.

It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.