..."That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up." - John Updike

I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.