And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This is the future as we see it. The swerve and the static. The confidence and the doubt.

The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.

About 25 years ago, I took a bicycle across the United States. I soon found out that the greatest item of clothing was the trusty bandanna. There were dozens of uses for a bandanna - as a pot holder, a chain cleaner, a sun shield, a headband, a snot rag, a declaration of Kerouacian intent.

Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty.