“He used to think things like, This organic soymilk will make me healthy and that'll make my brain work better and that'll improve my writing. Also things like, The less I eat the less money I spend on publicly owned companies the less pain and suffering will exist in the world. Now he thinks things like, It is impossible to be happy. Why would anyone think that? ”

“i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know"seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seeni feel this as an extremely distinct sensationof feeling like shit; the effect of small childrenis that they use declarative sentences and then look at your facewith an expression that says, ‘you will never do enoughfor the people you love’; i can feel the universe expandingand it feels like no one is trying hard enoughthe effect of this is an extremely shitty sensationof being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long timeit will take an extreme person to make me feel less alonethe effect of being alone for a very long timeis that i have been thinking very hard and learningabout mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraidthat i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expandingand it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your roomit was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only personalive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe expandingand making things be further apartand it feels like a declarative sentencewhose message is that we must try harder”

“But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at ease in society. He had just been too scared to try. But now he was forced to, and so he did–he went and got a job at the public library. He was not quite a librarian, but close. Greg was a shelver. There would be carts of books to shelve, then there would be no more carts of books to shelve, then there would be carts of books to shelve.As a shelver, Greg felt that life was passing him by in a slow and distant, but massive, way–like the moon.”

“In the parking lot, she drove and parked in a dark area with no other cars around. She reclined her seat, and listened to music. Outside there were trees, a ditch, a bridge; another parking lot. It was very dark. Maybe the Sasquatch would run out from the woods. Chelsea wouldn’t be afraid. She would calmly watch the Sasquatch jog into the ditch then out, hairy and strong and mysterious—to be so large yet so unknown; how could one cope except by running?—smash through some bushes, and sprint, perhaps, behind Wal-Mart, leaping over a shopping cart and barking. Did the Sasquatch bark? It used to alarm Chelsea that this might be all there was to her life, these hours alone each day and night—thinking things and not sharing them and then forgetting—the possibility of that would shock her a bit, trickily, like a three-part realization: that there was a bad idea out there; that that bad idea wasn’t out there, but here; and that she herself was that bad idea. But recently, and now, in her car, she just felt calm and perceiving, and a little consoled, even, by the sad idea of her own life, as if it were someone else’s, already happened, in some other world, placed now in the core of her, like a pillow that was an entire life, of which when she felt exhausted by aloneness she could crumple and fall towards, like a little bed, something she could pretend, and believe, even (truly and unironically believe; why not?), was a real thing that had come from far away, through a place of no people, a place of people, and another place of no people, as a gift, for no occasion, but just because she needed—or perhaps deserved; did the world try in that way? to make things fair?—it.”

“I won,” said Chelsea’s dad, and went to give Chelsea a high-five, but missed, as they were standing too close.“My fault,” he said. “That was my fault.”“Oh,” Chelsea said.And he stepped back a little and tried again, but Chelsea, distracted now by something—maybe the plant in the far corner, standing and waiting like a person in a dream; or maybe the green shoe or some other thing that was out there and longing, to be looked at, and taken—wasn’t ready, and their hands, his then hers, passed through the air in a kind of wave, a little goodbye.”

“Yeah. I like Chopin. I feel like Chopin is ‘emo.’ Do you like Chopin?”

“pink hamster’ recently criticized for not knowing what the word ‘meta’ means practicing a LOOKBOOK.nu pose titled ‘Practicing A LOOKBOOK.nu Pose In Anticipation of a Rumored LOOKBOOK.nu for Hamsters’ in anticipation of a rumored LOOKBOOK.nu for hamsters worried that LOOKBOOK.nu for hamsters will never be created and beginning to think (causing its eyes to unfocus slightly) of another way to show that it knows what the word ‘meta’ means and if maybe there’s a way to incorporate all of this, as it is, without the existence of LOOKBOOK.nu for hamsters, into one thing that would show to its detractors that it definitely knows what the word ‘meta’ means”