You die a little inside every time you have joyless sex. Neurons prune back. The good in there withers. And some things never grow back. - Hugh Howey

There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful.

There is much to do, pulling people away, right up until the Coast Guard comes and orders us to stop. Scott is dead. My cell phone is dead. My mother must think me dead. So it goes. I pick up the papers that have drifted down on the boat and have become plastered there, these relics from great buildings that no longer stand. The first one I grab is an insurance document. Listen: What I tell you here is true. The first line on the first page I pick up, it begins: In the event of damage to the building… So it goes.

But a stronger impulse seized the popular imagination: the ability to be great overnight. It was a new type of lottery, one where fame and talent were won rather than simple money.