“Aaron met him in New Jersey, coming back from his twice-annual visit to his sister’s in Cherry Hill, and within twenty minutes he’d asked Max to come home—to live.”

“…my parents’ divorce agreement, a tarot deck, an armadillo that sang a funny song when you squeezed its belly…”

“Last month our dog Zoe died.”

The radical promise of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science.

“The dogs sniffed my rhinoceros feet with delight.”

“Military folks the world over will tell you theirs is not a business of violence…That’s a lie.”

“The frosted window, above my kitchen sink, wasn’t open so I couldn’t make out the words, only what sounded like the noise of squabbling blue jays.”

“This was true, but the dogs whose bowls I filled only just outnumbered those I injected with pentobarbital, running my hands along their backs as their eyes filmed over, just the way a skin of ice settles still and foggy overtop the glossy water of the creek.”

When I have an idea for a story, I never know how it’s going to turn out or, even, what it’s really about. I tend to spill out my guts all over the page, and then go back and shape it.