All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > All The Lovers In The Night > Status Update

„I’d been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I’d finally realized how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, and a limitless supply of sounds and colors packed together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch. Nothing that would call my name. There never had been, and there never would be.“

„I don’t know how to explain it. ‘Dead inside’ is a little too dramatic. I just feel hard and numb, like some part of me is losing all feeling. I can’t stand being alone. I know this is my own doing, but it makes me really sad. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I know it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“San-zoku-ame, I said to myself. I could see it now. The sky goes dark over the mountain, closing in, and then there’s a crash of thunder, followed by a vicious rain that drenches the earth with a sound like every sheet of paper in the world being torn. I focused my imagination on the rain, letting it wash away all I could see and all I couldn’t see, obliterating everything.”

I didn’t choose any of this. Not my family, not my house, not my parents, not my school. This town is overflowing with things I never wanted. But everyone goes around with blank expressions on their faces, like they’re wearing matching masks or something. [..] People here confuse boredom and stagnation with peace and safety. I swear, everyone in this town is pretty much a cow. They just huddle together and moo.

“Always,” I laughed. “Books are so full of mistakes, it almost makes me wonder if they only exist so that the mistakes can pass their genes on to another generation.”
[…]
“I don’t know, constantly looking for mistakes like that . . .” […] “Doesn’t that wear you down a little? To keep looking for something you’ve decided is definitely there, when you can’t really say for sure?”

“When I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose, my head began to sway. I smelled the smells of drying grass. Looking out upon the bright white light of summer in the yard, I went into my room, and in no time, the whole world was blanketed in soft shadows, my little body, still the body of a child, lying motionless in the blue dark.”

“As I passed below the haloes of the green and red traffic signals, I was taken by this strange view of the evening, the city streets full of people—people waiting, the people they were waiting for, people out to eat together, people going somewhere together, people heading home together. I allowed my thoughts to settle on the brightness filling their hearts and lungs, squinting as I walked along […].”

“The first thing they teach you as a proofreader is that you’re not supposed to read the story on the page. That goes for a novel or any other kind of book. No reading allowed. […] Anyway, the idea is to keep our emotions out of it . . . to focus our energy on finding all the errors hiding in the book.”

“Some writers are great, but not successful. Then you get other writers who are successful, but not so great. […] Then again, I guess there are things like that everywhere. We get this all the time as women, right? Like, if you make plenty of money but don’t have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman. You know what I mean?”