Pain Is Like Fabric: The Stronger It

No," I Said. And Maybe It Was Only Because Alaska Couldn't Hit The Brakes And I Couldn't Hit The Accelerator.

And I Put The Latte Down On A Table, Awash In The Happy Middle Of My Greatest Adventure.

What Can We Do?" Mom Asked Again. I Shrugged. But She Kept Asking, As If There Were Something She Could Do, Until I Just Kind Of Crawled Across The Couch Into Her Lap And My Dad Came Over And Held My Legs Really Tight And I Wrapped My Arms All The Way Around My Mom's Middle And They Held On To Me For Hours While The Tide Rolled In.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

I Wrote My First Novel And My Second Novel In Chicago. It Was The Place Where I Became A Writer. It's My Favorite City.