I Can't Imagine Anybody Who Ends Up

Nilda Is Watching The Ground As Though She's Afraid She Might Fall. My Heart Is Beating And I Think, We Could Do Anything. We Could Marry. We Could Drive Off To The West Coast. We Could Start Over. It's All Possible But Neither Of Us Speaks For A Long Time And The Moment Closes And We're Back In The World We've Always Known.

Run A Hand Through Your Hair, Like The White Boys Do, Even Though The Only Thing That Runs Easily Through Your Hair Is Africa.

In The Months That Follow You Bend To The Work, Because It Feels Like Hope, Like Grace--and Because You Know In Your Lying Cheater's Heart That Sometimes A Start Is All We Ever Get.

We All Dream Dreams Of Unity, Of Purity; We All Dream That There's An Authoritative Voice Out There That Will Explain Things, Including Ourselves. If It Wasn't For Our Longing For These Things, I Doubt The Novel Or The Short Story Would Exist In Its Current Form. I'm Not Going To Say Much More On The Topic. Just Remember: In Dictatorships, Only One Person Is Really Allowed To Speak. And When I Write A Book Or A Story, I Too Am The Only One Speaking, No Matter How I Hide Behind My Characters.

I Mean, The Nation In Which We Live - And The World In Which We Live - Is So Extraordinarily More Like A Future Than The Futures That We're Being Sold On The Screen And On Television.