Where did the boy genius go? He had been, as a child, expected to be a neurosurgeon, or a great novelist. And now he's considering (or, okay, refusin… - Michael Cunningham

What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.

A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love. It was by no means his first romantic dropkick, but it was the first to have been conveyed by way of a five-line text, the fifth line of which was a crushingly corporate wish for good luck in the future, followed by three lowercase xxx’s.

"I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that."

"You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all."

"But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. I'm so sick."