The Nix: A novel

neurobiological traps, that the more he played Elfscape the more his brain was unable to compute any but the most short-term and proximate goals, which happened to be the goals of Elfscape itself—the

The things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst.

Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.

You wake up every morning intending to write but you don’t, ultimately, write. You can’t really say what exactly you spend your days doing, except that it is not writing.

so instead of enjoying the happy relaxed feeling while I’m having it, I feel this huge sense of dread about the moment I will no longer feel happy or relaxed. Which of course is the very thing that obliterates the happiness.”

Every life has a moment like this, a trauma that breaks you into brand-new pieces.

“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what

This was the price of hope, he realized, this shattering disappointment.

Samuel thinks about Bethany the way other people maybe think about God. As in: How is God judging me?