By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.

But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, expect there's still this sound you can't hear.

What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

But in a story I can steal her soul.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.