I Wrote This Book Because I Love You

God, how I long to go out west again someday—to drive some blue highway in Nevada or Utah until there’s absolutely nothing around me, then stop the car, in the middle of the road, maybe, and get out and just stand there, where I can see from one horizon to the other, and smell the air and feel the sun and listen to the silence of the desert. I have

We always forget the Heisenberg effect of our own presence—that we only ever get to see what other people are like when we’re around.

My friend Lauren told me that back when she was young and single there was a certain kind of guy she’d never liked because they only ever seemed to be provisionally present—always keeping their coats on, sitting on the arm of the sofa, affecting an air of being just about to take off for a better party somewhere else. Later, she said, after everyon

Hearing other people’s uncensored opinions of you is an unpleasant reminder that you’re just another person in the world and everyone else does not always view you in the forgiving light that you hope they will—making allowances, assuming good intentions, always on your side. There’s something existentially scary about finding out how little room y

Of course no one is the Right Person when you meet her; this is just an illusion necessary to lure you into investing the years and making the sacrifices necessary to love someone. It’s like telling yourself your book is going to be a masterpiece and make you rich in order to undertake the laborious ordeal of writing it. It’s only after making all

A friend of mine once had a dream about a strange and terrible device: a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said first before you could get to the best things said about