You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.

There's little question that short stories, like poetry, don't get the respect they deserve in the culture - but what can you do? Like Canute, one cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love, and hope one day, things change.

So the kind of boy I was, or that I was told to be, you were kind of this like half-gladiator, half-dude who, you know, was supposed to have as many girls as possible and work until your heart exploded, have no fear, you know.

For me I was always a smart nerdy kid. I wasn't the smartest and I wasn't the nerdiest, but I was a smart nerdy kid my whole childhood, and I definitely wanted to be somehow involved with reading the rest of my life, and I came from a community, I lived in a community, I was part of a community where reading was considered completely alien.

Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won't see it often.

It's never the changes we want that change everything.