and i wouldn't say no to something sweet.

But what she was really trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.

I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.

I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.

[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

Life is precious, so I ought to spend my days, you know, making sandwiches for homeless people and tending to the elderly in hospice care. Life is precious, so I should give everything away, except that I live in the world. And in the world, I actually have needs and wants, and I value my needs and wants. And I live in the world, and I can't just go make sandwiches every day because I also have to take kids to school. I also have to, you know, write books because that's my livelihood.