I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.

You know that this vignette and that vignette belong side by side, you know that a certain turn of phrase you've been saving will probably work best within a given section of the narrative. As in a jazz performance, writing lives or dies by what's produced in that moment. But that moment is attended by long preparation.

A MOB is not, as is so often said, mindless. A MOB is single-minded.

Not all coincidence has to be loaded with meaning. Sometimes, things simply recur because that's how it is in life, that's how the mood gets in. It's good to subtly overdo it too, as Nabokov does, as Sebald does. It's a good way to intensify that region of localized weather that we call a novel.

I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.

I schooled in the Boston area.

Love perhaps includes the promise that when the mob comes for you I'll go against the mob.