Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.

We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin.

Joy, it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self – delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.

(As an adult, it will stun you that most bizarre encounters with virtual strangers from this period could have ended by your simply leaving, walking away—an option you exercised by running off from various buys but that never occurred to you in real time).

Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible.

The head can travel a far piece while the body sits in one spot. It can traverse many decades, and many conversations can be had, even with the dead.

It's hard to be an articulate ghost.

Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation.

But it's a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go.