How was it possible to wake up every day and be recognizable to another when so often one was barely recognizable to oneself?

I take almost no notes when I write. I have one notebook - this old green leather notebook that my dad gave me a decade ago.

And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world!

I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect.

The truth is that she told me she couldn't love me. When she said goodbye, she was saying goodbye forever. And yet. I made myself forget. I don't know why. I keep asking myself. But I did.