Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It's like a homepage without a scroll button?'

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda’s voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it’s indelibly her own.

Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this writing job.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

Whatever she saw beyond the camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably - wasn't fit to be seen.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It's like a homepage without a scroll button?'