They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.

In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.