No One Is Talking About This: A Novel

Mostly, though, it passed into you, you, you, you, until she had no idea where she ended and the rest of the crowd began.

This did not feel like real life, exactly, but nowadays what did?

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.

It spoke of something deep in human beings, how hard she had to pinch herself when she started thinking of it all as a metaphor.

“I was just thinking that you and I . . . have seen very different memes in our lives.” ■

Previously these communities were imposed on us, along with their mental weather. Now we chose them—or believed that we did. A person might join a site to look at pictures of her nephew and five years later believe in a flat earth.

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.

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.

She put one true word after another and put the words in the portal. All at once they were not true, not as true as she could have made them.

take it for granted that at some point in the course of human events you will see a reason to put increasing amounts of your balls online.