He’d often had the feeling people were laughing at him, and finally understood why.

He stopped seeing them after realizing their kindness came more from pity than affection or respect.

Would I give up a lifetime for one more day with you? In a second.

Shoveling wet, heavy snow in a rage, wind roaring in your ears, you find yourself hoping for a heart attack and thinking, how fucked up is that?

Mon
Stepped outside. Seemed gross. Went back inside.
Tue
Same.
Thurs
—
Next week sometime
Birds, wind. Weeping.

His had been a life of accomplishment to no one but him. For him it had been a miracle.

For unknown reasons, they were willing participants in their own spiritual and psychological extermination.

They kept the empty high chair in its place at the table long past the time it was needed. It was astonishing that an inanimate object could retain a faint half-life of the love that had centered on it so many years before.

Even the simplest form possesses sufficient esthetic complexity for a lifetime of contemplation.

As they walked through their friends’ beautiful house, he was saddened to glimpse the exhaustion in his wife’s eyes. For her it had been for poorer, not richer, and in sickness, not health.