There’s secrets hiding inside this six-string just waitin’ for somebody to find ’em and turn ’em into music.

I asked about the price of the guitars, reminding him that if expected me to man the cash register, I’d need to know what to charge. He told me, ‘There ain’t no set price on these babies. Take what the customer offers you. Even if it’s his soul.

When a man’s running, he seldom looks back.

Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it’s yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is home. Sometimes finding home is a long time coming. A long journey.

A part of him died slowly, and the other part died overnight.

He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back. With the coach clocking him, Kevin took flight, his feet hitting the ground and pulling back with tremendous speed. Demons – visions of the eager hands of pretty boys with firm bodies – chased him, chipping away at the space separating them, their claws a whisper away from his flesh. He ran until he felt his lungs would give out; like a madman he ran.

At 2:00 sharp on the afternoon of his internment, with his body resting in a casket in the front room of his home, the pallbearers – all bridge players – stuck a deck of cards in Mr. Hampton’s cold hands, shut the lid over his head, and played bridge.

Although I wasn’t there to bear witness, I imagine Lot’s wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done.

Sometimes we need to be knocked down so we can experience the getting up.

I write books with words. Numerous words. Words that stomp and stare and crush and collapse and boogie and bang and scream and laugh and manipulate. My books are a storehouse of words that form paragraphs that form chapters that form stories that form thoughts that live on long after you’ve read the last word.