You're far from this. This story is just another few hundred pages of your mind.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

It's a lot easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.

I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.

They'd been standing like that for thirty seconds of forever.

The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.