If you don't say the honest thing, it never becomes true.

For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

The internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available.

One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

I didn't know what to say to her - I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

Every time I try to set something in Chicago, I get intimidated by 'Augie March.' It's easy to set something in Indianapolis - we don't have 'Augie March' here. But I love writing about Chicago, and I love being there and imagining lives in Chicago. I hope to set something there in the future, but it's intimidating.