How am I supposed to let you go, that's all I'm asking. I want to hold you again, smell you, and, yes too, I just want you to fade. To please, please fade.

... scarred by wisdom she'd never asked for.

I held her, he wanted to say, and if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn't raise the gun to my head fast enough.

I can't remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding's The Lord of the Flies. With The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell has written his masterpiece-spare, dark, and incandescently beautiful. It broke my heart.

I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus, they suck the life right out of a party.

The loneliness of another can be shocking when it lays itself bare without warning.

What molds us is what maims us.