“Aren't you curious? When did it stop working? Why did it stop working? Did we bring out the worst in each other? Was it just one persons fault or both of us? Aren't these questions everyone wants to ask when they split up with someone?”

“Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?”

“When aren't we acting?' he asked in his diary. 'When aren't we concealing? Would you like me to have been a fly on your wall yesterday? Did you do nothing shameful? Of course you did. The version of ourselves that we present to the world bears no resemblence to the truth. If we knew the truth about each other we could take noone seriously. There isn't one of us who could afford to be caught. That's all life is. Trying not to be found out.”

“We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.”

“We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?”

“Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?”