In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

It's a good rule of thumb, it seems to me: if you're not allowed to see where something comes from, don't put it in your mouth.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and tape.

They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to shout myself into his ear.