I wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself.

Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.

In the weeks that followed, we amazed ourselves. Our habits slid apart easily...And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple in China do them? Were a Swedish man and woman foot to foot at this very moment?

I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.

I'm interested in what the virtues of all those things are, especially for the kind of person who's made their own world that revolves around them, like writers do. It seems especially precious.

All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.

It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.