Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or Don't be. I suppose you could say that.

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.

In the end, we'll all become stories.

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

Starlet sex scandal. Giant squid involved.

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.