Nothing is a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.

I just adore her work. It's the subtle way she has of talking about the entirety of a life and the strange moments a life suddenly pivots upon. ... She's just a genius.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

But there was in the air that kind of distortion that bent you a little; it caused your usual self to grow slippery, to wander off and shop, to get blurry, bleed, bevel with possibility.

A story is a kind of biopsy of human life. A story is both local, specific, small, and deep, in a kind of penetrating, layered, and revealing way.

[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.