Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.

I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?

I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn’t come back

Marriage is like a chess match is initiated and the board expands over time until it takes up all of a life.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

I asked my schoolmate Mary to write a letter to me. She was funny and full of life. She liked to run around her empty house without any clothes on, even once she was too old for that. Nothing embarrassed her. I admired that so much, because everything embarrassed me, and that hurt me. She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.