(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.) (You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.) (And you are deserving of shame?) (I am. I am trying to tell you.) 'We were stupid,' he said, 'because we believed in things.' 'Why is this stupid?' 'Because there are not things to believe in.' (Love?) (There is no love. Only the end of love.) (Goodness?) (Do not be a fool.) (God?) (If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.

As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

....Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through a little speaker. [...] I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time.

I do think ordinariness is, in a way, the enemy, but not ordinariness as the opposite of flamboyance.

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.