I sighed. Don’t let anyone tell you that looking out for your vulnerable is less than a full-time deal.

Ann rolled her eyes. She had a marvelous eye roll, refined through long discipline, precise as acupuncture.

Of course vindictiveness is an ugly trait and, yes, I do mean to forgive all these nice deserters; I mean, eventually, to say, to their ghosts if not their living faces, It’s all right. I understand. I might’ve done the same. Not yet, though. Let me bear witness first. Two.

A person never knows what is next – I don’t anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it’s getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene.

My weary old ground was broken and watered, and what sprang up was a generalized longing.

It was wonderful and gauzy, going to sleep that way, like drifting in a small boat over a rippling sea.

His coat was open wing and wing but he was radiant with talk, and the wind blew over his big besmirched cheeks and exposed earlobes with no effect. He was like a small, hot, talkative planet.

Even as we sat, prying lids off milk bottles, we could hear the persecuted cooks banging around back in the kitchen, grandmas barking at each other, preparing the daily grotesque.

Once torched by truth, Swede wrote years later, a little thing like faith is easy.