Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

...and nostalgia swept through Jimmy like a sudden hunger.

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.

This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?