Explanations are such cheap poetry.

Lightning flashed dully inside the clouds on the horizon making them look as if they had fireflies of their own, monster fireflies the size of dinosaurs.

a cloud-congested caul that is alternately red, orange, vermilion, purple. Sometimes the clouds break apart in great, slow rafts, letting through beams of innocent yellow sunlight that are bitterly nostalgic for the summer that has gone by.

Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it's work... Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.

Acknowledge your good fortune by sharing it.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.