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Our culture cherishes a fantasy of a certain writerly existence.

If it were fiction, calling the place Newtown would be too much.

She had learned that it was easy to get Sylvi to do things.

The legendary author Robert Stone, in the words of his friends.

Isn’t it nice to think tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes yet?

The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.

Carte blanche is bodily as chalk on dark asphalt, so enliven these eyes.

She’d lifted the plot from a TV show she’d watched the night before.

I was happy I had no one to talk to, to be alone. Happy to be in the hospital.

He didn’t fall in line with our well-established porn-shop hierarchy.

Remember that innocence is risky, memory inconclusive.

Any invented quotation, played with confidence, can deceive.

“I’ve already submitted the course grades,” Costa said warily.

Well, back home has really changed, you won’t get that same bammy.

There was an intimacy to the sound that thrilled me.

My students are in rows, alive—day-picked apples cut by teeth.

Tomorrow I’ll be ratted out about the hunting, but I knew it’d be worth it.

Outside the kids play stretcher. One of them was dying between my hands.

Sing to your sisters in the water, let your arms and lashes flutter.

Kids were just let out of school to spend the summer running in packs.

The lock surrendered, after a short struggle, to the poker.

You have to be three times better than the white kids, at everything.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

It never occurred to me that I was being sold too, standing inside my box. Basil was annoyed. All that training he’d given me going to waste on art? I’ve been selling cigarettes, I said, as if it were a credential.

I saw myself, and for the first time, I didn’t look away.

The sex in these fantasies was always a product of love.

Grief is a rude houseguest. She stays up late. She leaves messes.

This is the worst moment of her life, maybe of anybody’s life, ever.

Expulsion. He was out, his course set. One word can turn the key.