The form is so malleable and can do so many things.

What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?

And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.

And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking--how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe--Pasquale Tursi said, only, "Yes.

He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.