“In the outside world, he said, people were visited in their houses by spirits they called television.Spirits spoke to people through what they called the radio.”

“A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.”

“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.”

“In the outside world, my brother told me, people were as reckless as animals and fornicated with strangers on the street.”

“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

“Churches in the outside world, my brother told me, were just the local stores that sold people lies made up in the distant factories of giant religions.”

“This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.”