“They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.”

“They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as it they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills.”

“There is always a melancholic silence before entering every New Year!”

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

“New places always help us look at life differently”

“WE We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful. We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire... like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED! The fire consumes our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places. Or. To find new places to hide. And wait. Touch me.”