How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

[I] am reading No Ordinary Joes. Should have had a medical checkup before I started it. Colton makes us fall in love with these guys, then puts our hearts in harm's way. It's lovely and ghastly and extremely powerful. His best yet.

Oh, of course, I always feel unconfident.

Suddenly the staggering love bursts away from me like milk from a smashed glass.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that women have as broad and deep a capacity for physical aggression as men is anecdotal. And as with men, this capacity has expressed itself in acts from the brave to the brutal, the selfless to the senseless.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

I am here, come closer," the old donkey said with her eyes. "I will mother you.