I Get Rational When I Panic.

I Assemble Stories-me And A Hundred Million Other People-at The Sentence Level. Not By Coming Up With A Sweeping Story Line.

I Think Of The Chimp, The One With The Talking Hands. In The Course Of The Experiment, That Chimp Had A Baby. Imagine How Her Trainers Must Have Thrilled When The Mother, Without Prompting, Began To Sign Her Newborn. Baby, Drink Milk. Baby, Play Ball. And When The Baby Died, The Mother Stood Over The Body, Her Wrinkled Hands Moving With Animal Grace, Forming Again And Again The Words: Baby, Come Hug, Baby Come Hug, Fluent Now In The Language Of Grief.

It Was Like That Class At School Where The Teacher Talks About Realization, About How You Could Realize Something Big In A Commonplace Thing. The Example He Gave--and The Liar Said It Really Happened--was That Once While Drinking Orange Juice, He'd Realized He Would Be Dead Someday. He Wondered If We, His Students, Had Had Similar 'realizations.' Is He Kidding? I Thought. Once I Cashed A Paycheck And I Realized It Wasn't Enough. Once I Had Food Poisoning, And Realized I Was Trapped Inside My Body.

Consolation Is A Beautiful Word. Everyone Skins His Knee-that Doesnt Make Yours Hurt Anyless.

Sometimes I Can Better Describe A Person By Another Person's Reaction. In A Story In My First Book, I Couldn't Think Of A Way To Sufficiently Describe The Charisma Of A Certain Boy, So The Narrator Says, "i Knew Girls Who Saved His Gum."