A woman must stay alone for a long while until the hate men have for women has left her, and even longer until the jealousy women have for other women has left her, and longer still until the anger her children have for her has left her—until she is no longer a woman altered by the resentment of men, women, and children, no longer what others have forced her to be, but empty as a skull or a shell, filled only by whatever she pleases, forest air perhaps.

[A]nxiety appears in [...] the instant when the subject is suspended between a moment at which he no longer knows where he is, and a shift towards a moment when he will become something in which he will never be able to find himself again. That's what anxiety is.

I’ve spent my whole life daydreaming. It embarrasses me to think of tallying the hours. It feels like ingratitude. It feels like infidelity. It’s often been about infidelity. I’ve daydreamed while walking, while running, while drinking, while smoking—sitting in the Boston cold, seventeen years old, daydreams sprouting like so many weeds from the cracked sidewalk of a broken heart. I’ve daydreamed on every form of transport—something about commuting feels conducive to daydreaming, the pockets of time in between our commitments, and the fact of the body in motion, neither here nor there, available for an elsewhere. I’ve daydreamed to music and in silence, in solitude and in company. It’s hardly exceptional.