There is a story in the book Night Shift, called 'The Mangler,' about a laundry machine that takes on a sort of malignant life. I worked in a laundry for about a year and a half after I got out of college. It was the only job I could find to support my wife and our first child. There was a fellow there that had no hands or forearms. He simply had hooks. This is one of the things that they don't tell you about when you become management. You have to wear a tie. It was this fellow's tie that did him in.

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

In spite of the problems he was having he was going on with his life. There are thousands who don’t or won’t or can’t and plenty of them aren’t in prison either.

No one likes to see a government folder with his name on it.

Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.

She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time.

He's a very nice man and all that, easy to get along with, fun, he never makes me cry. But is that love? I mean, is that all there is to it? Even when you learned to ride your two-wheeler, you had to fall off a few times and scrape both knees. Call it a rite of passage. And that was just a little thing.