If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him the answer to the question. If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first.

I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.

A more normal, mature way to think about it [my work] would be, Oh, I work on multiple projects at once and they overlap, but the actual psychology of it is a lot more self-abusing.

I wrestle my fears with every big decision I make. Ultimately, maybe all that wrestling does is make you sick of your own thoughts, and so with nothing resolved you just go ahead and have unprotected sex. The moment I became pregnant, everything became out of gait. None of those fears seem relevant in the same way, and that's so like life, that once you do the daring move you're in a totally different landscape. Now it's a new story.

He pulled away, but his eyes held my eyes like hands.

I actually don't have a great surplus of ideas. Some evolve very slowly, over many years, but I sort of trust that all of the interesting ones will become something that I eventually end up doing.

We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.