Man with goatee. Man who looked like a Beatles. All the Beatles at once. Woman wearing newspaper hat. I'd grown used to how weird New Yorkers were, and I could fit them into types.

— Olivia Sudjic

Maybe, as Mizuki said, we won't even really die, just carry on in the feedback loop we are stuck in. Instead of connecting with new things, widening our worlds, algorithms have shrunk it to a narrow chamber with mirrored walls.

— Olivia Sudjic

Mizuki loved reading the dictionary. She liked it when there were multiple meanings for words and when opposite meanings could be contained.

— Olivia Sudjic

My ability to make up lies on the spot chills me as much as it saves me.

— Olivia Sudjic

No order, no pattern, just chaos. Lots of little universes separated by invisible screens. . .

— Olivia Sudjic

Or maybe it was already too late; you only get one first love. She was mine, but I had not been hers. She was only going to look for some echo of it, and if I had made the right noises, that echo might have been me for a while.

— Olivia Sudjic

She told me it was unlucky to share a reading with others, but the main point, the one I don't mind mentioning because it seems relevant to the story, is that she said I had a kind of evil spirit following me. 'Obviously,' she added, 'that sucks. But if we get you some amber—

— Olivia Sudjic

She was convinced a word existed, a noun, that meant the loss of feelings for someone who was formerly loved—a word for the act of falling out of love. I said I couldn't think of it. It wasn't in the dictionary either, not the one she wanted.

— Olivia Sudjic

She was limp and pathetic and woozy, and I loved her, I realized, even more because I knew how completely it was doomed.

— Olivia Sudjic

Suddenly I had to laugh. It was like realizing you definitely need to projectile vomit when you thought you had it under control in some imprisoning form of public space.

— Olivia Sudjic