She fell apart because that’s what happens.
Something invisible snapped inside her.
You say into my cracks and I saw into yours.
The not knowing would not keep me from caring.
Life has become the future.
We were just looking at ideas of each other.
What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant.
He lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps did not involve cigarettes.
It looked like an old painting, but real – everything achingly idyllic in the morning light – and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead.
Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don’t.
It was kind of a beautiful day, finally real summer in Indianapolis, warm and humid – the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn’t built for humans, we were built for the world.
But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Light, the visible reminder of Invisible Light.
I really like umbrellas. It’s like, I have a roof! I carry it with me! Umbrellas always amuse me.
There’s a place in the brain for knowing what cannot be remembered.
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.
Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes place for that.
YOU are valuable and rare and worthy of love.
My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.
In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.