"'Hardscrabble' was how they described my life, but I've always preferred to think of myself as a gourmand of privation," he said, in his booming voice that hadn't lost its power with age.

Walter realized technology, rather than advancing the human race, had spurred on a new tribalism that left the world teetering on the brink of a new Dark Ages.

Like looking through a crack in a door and seeing a hidden truth for the first time, it suddenly sank in that he'd been duped for decades.

They celebrated the right to drink shitty beer and blow things up with two-barreled bluster.

The sinking stone in her heart stirred rippling waves of rage and defeat.

There is always something deeply doleful about old images of what the future was supposed to look like.

I watched the small determined snail inch its way across the sidewalk only to be snatched up by a hungry crow and devoured whole.