“Inside this pencilcrouch words that have never been writtennever been spokennever been taughtthey’re hidingthey’re awake in theredark in the darkhearing usbut they won’t come outnot for love not for time not for fireeven when the dark has worn awaythey’ll still be therehiding in the airmultitudes in days to come may walk through thembreathe thembe none the wiserwhat script can it bethat they won’t unrollin what languagewould I recognize itwould I be able to follow itto make out the real namesof everythingmaybe there aren’tmanyit could be that there’s only one wordand it’s all we needit’s here in this pencilevery pencil in the worldis like this”

“I also read that spending time with a pedophile can be like a drug high. There was this girl who said it’s as if the pedophile lives in a fantastic kind of reality, and that fantasticness infects everything. Kind of like they’re children themselves, only full of the knowledge that children don’t have. Their imaginations are stronger than kids’ and they can build realities that small kids would never be able to dream up. They can make the child’s world… ecstatic somehow. And when it’s over, for people who’ve been through this, it’s like coming off of heroin and, for years, they can’t stop chasing the ghost of how it felt. One girl said that it’s like the earth is scorched and the grass won’t grow back. And the ground looks black and barren but inside it’s still burning.”

“When it comes to food, we are, in essence, following an eating script that has been written into the circuits of our brains.”

“But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps it’s their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise won’t come true.”

“Writers have two main problems. One is writer’s block, when the words won’t come at all, and the other is logorrhea, when the words come so fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time.”

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”