An act of evil is the death of wonder

Above the dirt of an unmarked grave and beneath the shadow of the abandoned refinery, the children would play their own made up games: Wild West Accountants! in which they would calculate the loss of a shipment of gold stolen from an imaginary stagecoach, or Recently Divorced Scientists! in which they would build a super-collider out of garbage to try and win back their recently lost loves.

Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow is a marvel, deftly examining the connections between art and everyday life. Andy Sturdevant's lively, unique inquiries into trust fund kids, co-opted flags, gubernatorial portraits, art in second-tier cities, and Upper Midwestern esoterica, brim with both wit and humor.

When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer.

Where do you go when you die? Ha ha. Go on, go on and tell her, Billy." Billy smiles. "You become a little voice in someone's ear telling them that things will be alright.

In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.

It is what we see when we imagine what the afterlife must be like: our happiest triumphs, our most sincere moments, stolen from the seam of our lives, a respite just before the onset of imminent tragedy.