She shelves the human urge to differentiate and name, and allows every person, ritual, and object in her purview to roam freely, uncollected by her thoughts.

His skepticism does not surprise her. Not being believed has become a hobby.

Outside, people walk in slow motion sending what they think are kind words through water, but she can’t hear them. She thanks him, goes home, takes off her clothes, and does not eat anything. She can’t imagine anything braver than leaving the house.

Human life is quick. I do not mean: Life is short. I mean: The reason we feel like certain significant days happened only yesterday is because they did. Many of us have bodies that age preposterously out of proportion with how young we are. It’s like aging in theater time. We’re all seven-year-olds hired to play the parts of adults. A decade is not

Every human dies. But the bad news is that every day they act like they don’t know they’re alive. They lie or behave inconsiderately or cheat. Each one is a little death. Humans experience many little deaths before the final one.

Scientists don’t have a theory to explain how this giant luminosity remained hidden for so long. But Adina wouldn’t underestimate the human tendency to ignore whatever they don’t understand.

Grace is unmerited kindness. Unmerited because you are a wretch which is a synonym for human which is a synonym for flawed. Grace, a place to store loss.

We’re so tender, Adina thinks, our puny bodies cannot withstand any of this, how do we get through even one day?

But it was Yoko Ono who had the magic. Once you understand this, you see these institutions everywhere. And when you realize you’re living inside an institution in which actual artists are shunned while inferior artists are rewarded, where someone says, “If there’d been no Yoko Ono we’d have four more Beatles albums,” and to avoid argument someone