Tremor: A Novel

Death in human life only makes sense when death has been acknowledged. It is not a raw biological fact, not for humans. Death is knowledge of death, death is the ritual for the dead. This is why when we hear someone has died we always want to know how it happened: because in order to begin to absorb the pain of the loss we need a narrative. Acknowl

When possible he wants to listen and receive the music in his body before he gives it a name.

Who knows what’s happening in someone else’s head? He cannot with any confidence say what’s happening in his own head.

In those moments when the listening is shallow he perceives a distance between what he hears and what it means.

lineage is a forest of forking paths.

The moment will come when the one facing the greatest suffering is me. I will have to understand that my suffering has no greater meaning. I will have to accept the fact of my own extinction, will have to understand that my appearance, my voice, my gait, my preferences, and my mannerisms not to mention the innumerable nebulous traits that constitut

We worry about close calls for the ones we love including the close calls they had long before we even knew they existed.

there’s the stubborn gap between what he is able to think and what he is able to do.

We want whatever it is that can help us draw the absent shape, we look for more information, more data points, an ever-greater accumulation of stories and remembrances. But the quest is never finished, the one who went away never returns. Slowly the bank of stories is depleted. The memories evaporate.