This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled.

An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore.

Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.

Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.

Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don’t talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don’t want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist.