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.

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.

The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.

The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.