She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the ol… - Richard Ford

He was like my father. They each wanted me to be their audience, to hear the things they needed to express.

In their faces — plenty of them were handsome, but ruined — I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.

She said that it was a mistake to have made as few superficial friends as I have done in my life, and to have concentrated only on the few things I have concentrated on — her, for one. My children, for another. Sportswriting and being an ordinary citizen. This did not leave me well enough armored for the unexpected, was her opinion. She said this was because I didn't know my parents very well, had gone to a military school, and grown up in the south, which was full of betrayers and secret-keepers and untrustworthy people, which I agree is true, though I never knew any of them.