Selfishly, I hope the novel and literature are around for as long as people are. It will obviously change shapes and perhaps not even be recognizable two hundred years from now, but for me, literature has given me life. I can’t think of anything that’s given me such solace and hope and beauty.

This is why she ran away when a pregnant woman crossed her path. “I didn’t want to be near the hands that left marks on everything they touched,” writes Stambo.

As if any of them would give a damn about him, some washed-up vet from the Korean War, one of the wars they don’t really teach about in school, because the jury’s still out on whether we won.

He swears that he can feel them sometimes, phantom appendages on his back twitching and thrumming with unlived life. “I swear mummy. I swear.”

“People are observing when they first get somewhere,” Sam said. “Or when they’re about to leave.” 

Grievance 10 is also not able to be analyzed. It seems you have submitted a recollection of a dream in which you and Susan are adults, old, with sagging breasts, inside a dressing room.