I had had no idea how deep the addiction went—it had essentially replaced me. I was a human being who had structured herself around the narcotic and the prop, who had melded with the narcotic and the prop. Once the narcotic and prop were no longer available, the human being simply died. I was left in a kind of mourning. I was grief stricken. I had murdered someone, and it was me.

- Deborah Eisenberg talking about quitting smoking in an interview for the Spring 2013 issue of The Paris Review; her experience running around the YMCA track during that period became the basis for her first published story