When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.

Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

You say true, I say thankya.

There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.

I know I can do it," Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. "I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.

There is a relationship between humor and fear. Think of all the gags you ever heard that have to do with dismemberment, or something that's horrible in one way or another, even if it's just horrible in the sense that somebody's being embarrassed. What do kids laugh at? Kids laugh if your fly's down. That's hilarious. But for the kid whose fly is down, it's a horrible situation.