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?

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.

I'm not a cinephile. My films don't reference films. I'm more interested in rhythm and feeling.

Where do we come from? Do souls really exist? I can't answer these questions, especially not at 6am.

She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.

After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it.

An erratum is a correction inserted into a book after publication. It's a nice thing to collect because you can't go after them, you just come upon them. In 25 years I've only found about 12.