Zorro lived in his mother’s basement until he could get back on his feet.

Or, today, when early summer sweated the long pants off every woman under the age of thirty. Did I notice the way you looked at them for one, two, three seconds; then didn't, partial to short-shorts. It was sly how you kept them in your line of sight, alm

There was an empty box on his facebook page asking to be filled in with, “What’s on your mind?” He thought. "Hair?"

Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

I read it all wrong. In writing her novel, I thought Marilynne Robinson was writing about twins — writing, in some way, about me. Instead, these characters, Lucille and Ruthie, were standard sisters, one older than the other. In fact, Robinson explains th

It was the middle of May when I found out my teacher was screwing my mother.

Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went

I wondered if Mr. Slane even knew/ how many dogs he owned

The night is very clear and unusually cold. We are so near to the star that its light banishes the darkness that tries futilely to extinguish it. A small village twinkles in the foothills to our east. The cry of a lost sheep cuts the night like a blade

I wander toward the midnight dock a neon sine curve stabs my eyes

better than being dead

Sleep left him like a fragmenting illusion. Suddenly, he was awake, like something pressing but fleeting had awoken him. Once awake, though, all he had was silence and stillness. His pulse quickened, his…

unwrapping the gauze from her wrists....

They acquire him in a bar that is famous for its shipwrecks.

"His middle name is Valentine, and when asked about it, he isn't sure why."