A few gray cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.

“I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years fro…”

“I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, …”

“Six pull-tabs lay in the ashtray like scales from a mermaid.”

“mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way wit…”