Tiny Cooper is splayed out across the thin carpet, using his backpack as a pillow. He’s wearing skinny jeans, which look very much like denim sausage casings.

Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.

If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything.

And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.

Hey Pudge," the Colonel said. "What do you think of a truce?" "It reminds me of when the Germans demanded that the U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge," I said. "I guess I'd say to this truce offer what General McAuliffe said to that one: Nuts.

"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."

I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.