Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: “I will not be nothing.”

Say yes, babe, or I'll spill you off over the Wall next time - got it?

Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for.

...but with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other.

Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn't be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.

Betrayal would be a different sort of sick.