I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.

He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

You probably have to trust that your work is following certain themes and certain movements, but then the rest is a kind of piecing together so that the whole becomes larger than the parts.

Who isn't crazy sometimes? Who hasn't driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn't haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn't toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence email, watched the phone praying it will ring; who doesn't lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.

I doubt the terrorists saw 9/11 as a teaching opportunity. And we're not really a culture geared to anything as humble as 'learning.' But I was disappointed in how quickly everyone wanted to get back to normal. It was as if we watched terrorism on TV for a while, then got bored and turned back to 'American Idol.'

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.