Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn’t chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain.

Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.