It was the first time that we had sort of articulated our major problem. She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other.

I wondered if it was possible to donate my body to science before I was actually dead. I wondered if a disease were to be named after me what the symptoms would be.

But love, like a mushroom high compared with the buzz from cheap weed, outlasts grief.

I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.

David Bergen is a master of taut, spare prose that's both erotic and hypnotic. . . .

Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it helps you get through life?

Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.