If we admitted how terrifying life is,
would we need more drugs, or less?

Posting food on instagram = act of public defecation.

Once you’ve had a thought there’s no reason to ever have it again.

Things to avoid: mirrors, clocks.

The universe deposits money in our accounts every day, in the form of reality.

All-purpose advice: wire now, detonate later.

I suspect the only true answer to pretty much anything is maybe.

Passing Rockland Psych Center, saw dead dog on side of road.
Wept for next 38 miles.
Just when you think there’s nothing left, there it is again.

We spent the next two decades holed up on the Cape in a drafty pink ranch house where I slammed out hundreds of short stories for low-paying sci-fi pulps. As it turns out, financial ruin and amphetamines make for a powerful muse. For a time we had a side line raising mushrooms in our basement, but it never paid off. That period finally ended when a collection of my writing marketed under the title The Unsound Mind of L. Rand Steiner met with modest success.

Listen—I never really made it out of there. The kids gave up on me long ago. Ann and I no longer speak. There’s a bad feeling lodged deep in my chest. The last time we spoke my son looked me in the eye and said well, Dad, it’s been weird. I didn’t know if he was saying goodbye, and was afraid to ask.

Is your work keeping you young, or making you old?

Your prayers were answered, but not in a form you recognized.