You remembered. Of course, Clark said. That’s one thing I like about birthdays, they stay in one place. Same spot on the calendar, year in, year out. But the years keep going faster, have you noticed?
You can’t argue with them, because they live by an entirely different logic. You come to a town where everyone’s dressed all in white, for example. I’m thinking of a town we visited once just outside...
You can't argue with them, because they live by an entirely different logic.
When you think of how the world’s changed in your lifetime, what do you think about? I think of killing. Her gaze was steady. Really? Why? Have you ever had to do it? François sighed. He didn’t like t...
What’s the point of doing all that work, Tesch asks, if no one sees it? It makes me happy. It’s peaceful, spending hours working on it. It doesn’t really matter to me if anyone else sees it.
We have been lost for so long,’ she said, still quoting from that scene. She looked past him at the boy. The boy was staring at the gun in his hands. He was nodding, seemingly to himself. ‘We long o...
Those previous versions of herself were so distant now that remembering them was almost like remembering other people, acquaintances, young women whom she’d known a long time ago, and she felt such co...
This was something he adored about her, the way she let things go so easily. What a pleasant state of affairs, he’d been thinking lately, to be with a woman who didn’t hold a grudge.
This was actually the main difference between twenty-one and fifty-one, he decided, the sheer volume of regret.
They acted because they loved acting, but also, let’s be honest here, to be noticed. All they wanted was to be seen. I’ve been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I...
There was a reminder that the library was always seeking books, and that they paid in wine. The librarian, François Diallo, was also the newspaper’s
There seemed to be a limitless number of objects in the world that had no practical use but that people wanted to preserve: cell phones with their delicate buttons, iPads, Tyler’s Nintendo console, a...
The first sentence of the assassin’s note rang true: we were not meant for this world. I returned to my city, to my shattered life and damaged home, to my loneliness, and tried to forget the sweetness...
The corridor was silent. It was necessary to walk very slowly, her hand on the wall. A man was curled on his side near the elevators, shivering. She wanted to speak to him, but speaking would take too...
Survival might be insufficient, she’d told Dieter in late-night arguments, but on the other hand, so was Shakespeare.
Stop looking for me. I'm not missing; I do not want to be found. I wish to remain vanishing. I don't want to go home.
Stick to musicians. I think we’re generally saner.
So this is how it ends, she thought, when the call was over, and she was soothed by the banality of it. You get a phone call in a foreign country, and just like that the man with whom you once thought...
She watched his gaze flicker over her suit, her gleaming shoes, and realized he was performing the same reconciliations she was, adjusting a mental image of a long-ago spouse to match the changed pers...
She loved details, and the world, and inevitably became lost in both. Violently beautiful sunsets could reduce her to tears. She was virtually incapacitated by fireflies.