There Seemed Nothing So True As A

Pleasantness Was The Machismo Of The Midwest. There Was Something Athletic About It. You Flexed Your Face Into A Smile And Let It Hover There Like The Dare Of A Cat.

Surely That Was Why Faith Had Been Invented: To Raise Teenagers Without Dying. Although Of Course It Was Also Why Death Was Invented: To Escape Teenagers Altogether.

Writing Is Both The Excursion Into And The Excursion Out Of One's Life. That Is The Queasy Paradox Of The Artistic Life. It Is The Thing That, Like Love, Removes One Both Painfully And Deliciously From The Ordinary Shape Of Existence. It Joins Another Queasy Paradox: That Life Is An Amazing, Hilarious, Blessed Gift And That It Is Also Intolerable.

Her Life Her Life Had Taken On The Shape Of A Terrible Mistake. She Hadn't Been Given The Proper Tools To Make A Real Life With, She Decided, That Was It. She'd Been Given A Can Of Gravy And A Hair-brush And Told, "there You Go." She'd Stood There For Years, Blinking And Befuddled, Brushing The Can With The Brush.

Writers Have No Real Area Of Expertise. They Are Merely Generalists With A Highly Inflamed Sense Of Punctuation.