The question that was the pure liquid element of the portal—who am I failing to protect?—had found its stopped-clock answer.

The doors of bland suburban houses now looked possible, outlined, pulsing—for behind any one of them could be hidden a bright and private glory.

She could barely recall her previous life, the flights through blue rare space, the handing over of tickets and stamping of passports, the gorgeous violent ruptures of somewhere-elseness.

In contrast with her generation, which had spent most of its time online learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think they meant

No amount of sugar-eating or being scared would help.

They kept raising their hands excitedly to high-five, for they had discovered something even better than being soulmates: that they were exactly, and happily, and hopelessly, the same amount of online.

the doctor who must have felt a ping in her lower belly the moment we lost the Supreme Court,

For as long as she read the news, line by line and minute by minute, she had some say in what happened, didn’t she?

It was a mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were. Besides, you were not even living that deeply.