I Would Like To Go For A

Sometimes A Flat-footed Sentence Is What Serves, So You Don't Get All Writerly: 'he Opened The Door.' There, It's Open.

I Know When A Story Is Finished When There Is Not A Single Thing More I Can Think To Do To It. And Since I Know At The Start What The Last Line Will Be, I Know When I've Reached That Point As Logically As I Can That It's Finished. As For The Rewriting-it's Not Foolproof, Of Course, But If You're Honest About Having Thought Of Every Possibility And You Still Come Back To What You Have, What More Can You Do?

It Is Possible To Imagine A Person So Entirely That The Image Resists Attempts To Dislodge It.

It Was Like That Class At School Where The Teacher Talks About Realization, About How You Could Realize Something Big In A Commonplace Thing. The Example He Gave--and The Liar Said It Really Happened--was That Once While Drinking Orange Juice, He'd Realized He Would Be Dead Someday. He Wondered If We, His Students, Had Had Similar 'realizations.' Is He Kidding? I Thought. Once I Cashed A Paycheck And I Realized It Wasn't Enough. Once I Had Food Poisoning, And Realized I Was Trapped Inside My Body.

I Think Of The Chimp, The One With The Talking Hands.