The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.

I told him about the way they get to know you. Not the way people do, the way they flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn't a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction - dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there's not an end to it.

I get rational when I panic.

I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.

When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.

consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.