“sad things are beautiful only from a distancetherefore you just want to get away from themfrom a distance of one hundred and thirty years ....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful”

“A world without right or wrong was a world that did not want itself, anything other than itself, or anything not those two things, but that still wanted something. A world without right or wrong invited you over, complained about you, and gave you cookies. Don't leave, it said, and gave you a vegan cookie. It avoided eye contact, but touched your knee sometimes. It was the world without right or wrong. It didn't have any meaning. It just wanted a little meaning.”

“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”

“that was bad; i shouldn't have done thatto prevent you from entering a catatonic statei am going to maintain a calm facial expressionwith crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanori believe in a human being that is not upseti believe if you are working i should not be insaneor upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?i vacuumed the entire house this morningi cleaned the kitchen and the computer roomand i made you a meat helmet with computer paperthe opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are aloneand separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of momentsand the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinkingyour hands are covering your faceand your body moves like a statuewhen i try to manipulate an appendageif i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time”

“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.”

“...one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten.”

“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.”