...Cocaine. The stuff is everywhere. - John Updike

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.

The fiction writer is the ombudsman who argues our humble, dubious case in the halls of eternal record.