“THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME“That day, the saucer day the zombie dayThe Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds cameAnd snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the dayAll plants died, plastics dissolved, the day theComputers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the dayAngels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,And all the bells of London were sounded, the dayAnimals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,You didn’t notice any of this becauseyou were sitting in your room, not doing anythingnot even reading, not really, justlooking at your telephone,wondering if I was going to call.”

“He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.”

“Friday's a free day. A woman's day.”

“Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one's ever eaten before? Like chicken and telepone ice cream? Green mouse ice cream was the worst. I didn't like that at all.”

“There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.”

“Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.”

“To be a good writer... read a lot and write every day.”