Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums.

People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.

This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.

Life isn't life if you just float through it.

Love is a kind of possession. It’s a poison.

The thing is, you don't get to know. It's not like you wake up with a bad feeling in your stomach. You don't see shadows where there shouldn't be any. You don't remember to tell your parents you love them or--in my case--remember to say good-bye to them at all.

How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?