He Wanted This Someone To See How

But She Was Seventeen Now And Not Actually Dumb. She Knew That You Could Love Somebody More Than Anything And Still Not Love The Person All That Much, If You Were Busy With Other Things.

Depression Presents Itself As A Realism Regarding The Rottenness Of The World In General And The Rottenness Of Your Life In Particular.

If You Read The Biographies Of People Who Have Written Good Books, You Often See The Point Where They Suddenly Come Into Themselves, And Those Weeks In The Spring Of 1997 Were When I Came Into Myself As A Writer. They Feel Like Some Of The Best Weeks Of Writing I’ll Ever Have. The Discovery That I Could Write Better About Something As Trivial As An Ordinary Family Dinner Than I Could About The Exploding Prison Population Of The United States, And The Corporatization Of American Life, And All The Other Things I’d Been Trying To Do, Was A Real Revelation.

But Nothing Disturbs The Feeling Of Specialness Like The Presence Of Other Human Beings Feeling Identically Special.

Then She Waited, With Parted Lips And A Saucy Challenge In Her Eyes, To See How Her Presence -- The Drama Of Being Her -- Was Registering. In The Way Of Such Chicks, She Seemed Convinced Of The Originality Of Her Provocation.