What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?

I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.

Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?

Love is a powerful painkiller.

Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.