I said nothing—I hadn’t known Marya, and anyway, “listening quietly” was my general social strategy

She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth.

As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.

He told me this while ripping through his duffel bag, throwing clothes into drawers with reckless abandon. Chip did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirt drawer. He believed that all drawers were created equal and filled each with whatever fit. My mother would have died.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager." "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said."You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?""But you don't even have my phone number," he said."I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other."

I think that most of us [writers] would rather have an audience than countless riches. If we wanted to be rich, we'd be doing smething else.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness