Your Numbness Is Something Perhaps

[t]he Normal And The Everyday Are Often Amazingly Unstoppable, And What Is Unimaginable Is The Cessation Of Them. The World Is Resilient, And, No Matter What Interruptions Occur, People So Badly Want To Return To Their Lives And Get On With Them. A Veneer Of Civilization Descends Quickly, Like A Shining Rain. Dust Is Settled.

She Was Not Good On The Phone. She Needed The Face, The Pattern Of Eyes, Nose, Trembling Mouth... People Talking Were Meant To Look At A Face, The Disastrous Cupcake Of It, The Hide-and-seek Of The Heart Dashing Across. With A Phone, You Said Words, But You Never Watched Them Go In. You Saw Them Off At The Airport But Never Knew Whether There Was Anyone There To Greet Them When They Got Off The Plane.

People Love Gossip Because It's Slightly Removed From Actuality. It's A Very Literary Thing... You Can Hear A Great Story, And It Turns Out That It's Largely Not True. Fiction Writing Is Like Gossip. It's Not Malicious Gossip, But It's Gossip.

I Don't Think Of Any Sentence As A "one-liner", But I Do Pay Attention To How People Actually Speak When They Are Being Funny. Rhythm Is Key.

It Was Not Miserable - Often I Did Not Miss Her At All. But There Was Sometimes A Quick, Sinking Ache When I Walked In The Door And Saw She Was Not There. Twice, However, I'd Felt The Same Sinking Feeling When She Was.