We've become a nation of indoor cats, he'd said. A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers. Thank God these weren't the kind of Americans who settled this country. They were a different breed! They crossed the country in wagons with wooden wheels! People croaked along the way, and they barely stopped. Back then, you buried your dead and kept moving.

I went to public school all my life and all through college and I liked it.

People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.

We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.

When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.

Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.

Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the tree calligraphic.