When we lose that sense of the possible we lose it fast. One day we are absorbed by dressing well, following the news, keeping up, coping, what we mi… - Joan Didion

When we lose that sense of the possible we lose it fast.

We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.

It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned.