I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.
Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders'] ghosts was a part of it.
In a whisper he began begging forโand, as the sun set, receivedโthe concession people always beg for: a little more time.
Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.