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Be glad the numbness in your legs isn’t reading on your face.

I saw Baryshnikov twice. Heard Pavarotti, Marsalis, and Ma.

I realize now that hers was the face that taught me what driving was.

Here’s a first, he said, some nutbag wants to dig the grave himself.

The story doesn’t begin until the van breaks down, I always say.

“And if you ever tell anybody what I’m about to tell you, I’ll deny it.”

Wishing he could change everything, knowing he can’t. That’s the blues.

The store was one of his last-ditch efforts to make a pile of money.

The handwritten first draft pages of Robert Olen Butler's first novel.

Manuscript pages from The Blue Flower and The Bookshop.

Nina sang “Tell Me More and More and Then Some” on the Caddy’s radio.

Byron’s mother read things to him: Language is fun. Play. Let’s play.

I returned to Vietnam with a tape recorder to collect ca dao.

The exurban dream of it all, to enter is to have the ability to exit.

Under skin, I can see her beating heart frantic as a trapped toad—

The purpose of all rules of piety is to extend revelation into ordinary life.

The mortician who painted our girl was not a somber-suited officiant.

I’m a theatrical lyricist. I would never choose to look fat in public.

Liza Donnelly

Liza Donnelly

Chris Weyant

Mick Stevens

I loved hopping freight trains. It was cheap, dirty, and dangerous.

I rented a house in the woods of East Hampton as a form of therapy.

On the anniversary of your death, a memory sharpens, as if illuminated.

I am tamping down the earth with the flat side of a blade I am burying you