ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.

She was gone, and all that was left was the space where you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence.

I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.

Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs.

Now we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, "I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend." I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

I have always written about characters who fall somewhere in the spectrum between solitary and totally alienated.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.