When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it.

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.