"But the ground shakes, as if something's trying to push up from below, and I think of other people's mothers shaking out their duvets or even God shaking out the fabric of space-time."
"But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead."
"I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book."
"I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower."
"Homeopaths argue that water has a memory."
"I feel like crying. There's something so sad about broken concrete."
"Max always mumbles; not in a shy way, but rather as if he's telling you what it will cost to take out your worst enemy, or how much you'd have to pay to rig a horse race."
"If something wants to be a story, it will be."
"Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules."
"The sky is grey, with a thin TV-static drizzle that hangs in the air like it's been freeze-framed."
"There's something romantic about it, of course, in the way only other people's lives can be."
"Sometimes I like to think I live with ghosts. Not from my past, but wispy bits of ideas and books that hang in the air like silk puppets. Sometimes I think I see my own ideas, floating around too, but they usually don't last that long. They're more like mayflies; they're born, big and gleaming, and then they fly around, buzzing like crazy before they fall to the floor, dead, about twenty four hours later."
"Sometimes I wake up with such an immense sense of disappointment that I can hardly breathe."