Why were you feeling low? Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.

I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.

It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

Mayfield said, "You asked what I was thinking. Well, I will tell you. I was thinking that a man like myself, after suffering such a blow as you men have struck on this day, has two distinct paths he might travel in his life. He might walk out into the world with a wounded heart, intent on sharing his mad hatred with every person he passes; or, he might start out anew with an empty heart, and he should take care to fill it up with only proud things from then on, so as to nourish his desolate mind-set and cultivate something positive or new.

...but I could not sleep without proper covering and spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.