"The more I teach writing, the more I see that fiction writers are some mutant strain of addict, like creatively channeled obsessive-compulsive disorder."

We weren't expecting shepherds, / and nearly tripped over them, since / we were looking at the sky.

Gretina watched Werner as he worked with his tiny tools, dozens of them, to make incomprehensible objects. All small, smaller than her hand; all like nothing she had ever seen. They whirred, they pulsed, they pumped when he stuck tiny tubes in them. They crawled along the table till they fell into her lap.