People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.

Any other vexations to report?" he asks. "I love the word 'vexations.'" "It's the 'x.' Nice to jump off a 'v' and bite into an 'x' like that." "Just the usual ones," she says. "How was the weekend?" "Vexing. Not really, I just wanted to say it. You?

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.

What she wants to say has to do not only with joy but with the penetrating, constant fear that is joy's other half.

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief.