A brief line from my novel Nod, Virginia:

He was thirty-three years old, certainly old for a beginner teacher but the Ice-Cream Stop had burned down and he didn’t have insurance or the wherewithal to rebuild and teaching had seemed like a good idea.

Note: Above is a picture of the real Ice-Cream Stop here in Abingdon. It is, in reality, in fine shape!

Another line from Nod, Virginia:

Carson, head still plunked on the steering wheel, reached into the glove-box for his flask of liquid courage. He turned it up and gulped, felt the burn, imagined melting like that bitch witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Perfect Day.

Emma at Seabrook Island

“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to.” --G.K. Chesterton