Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.

In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing "let's pretend

Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.