She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious - not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning victim.

In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.

I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something.

In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

People around the world were moving from one place to another. No one was staying.

I spent my life learning to feel less.