She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?

No matter that you anticipate a thing; you get so used to it as part of the future that its actuality, its arrival, its force and presence, startles you, takes you by surprise, as would a ghost suddenly appearing in the room wearing familiar perfume and boots.

Later I would come to believe that erotic ties were all a spell, a temporary psychosis, even a kind of violence, or at least they coexisted with these states.

I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.

All the way out I listen to the car AM radio, bad lyrics of trailer park love, gin and tonic love, strobe light love, lost and found love, lost and found and lost love, lost and lost and lost love—some people were having no luck at all. The DJ sounds quick and smooth and after-shaved, the rest of the world a mess by comparison.

This was my modest dream come true: unambitious flight. The kind that never even got high enough for a view.

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.