Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had. Warren Lasher Ed "Rubberhead" Catapano Charles Deats or Keats Alfonse Tuck it in your pocket. Leave it lying around, conspicuously. Somehow you lose it. Make "mislaid" jokes to yourself. Make another list.

I want to pretend there's such a thing as requited love. As the endurance of love.

Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.

Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest. There was something athletic about it. You flexed your face into a smile and let it hover there like the dare of a cat.

Forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused.

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.

As the most recently arrived to earthly life, children can seem in lingering possession of some heavenly lidless eye.