Surrealism could not be made up. It was the very electricity of the real.

I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.

I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are being funny. Rhythm is key.

An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.

I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess.

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.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.