Michael’s Reviews > Crackling Mountain and Other Stories > Status Update

“Last evening, while the two of us were drinking, I turned to my uncle and asked in jest, ‘Define life for me — in just a word or two.’
‘I don’t know about life,’ he replied, ‘but the world’s nothing but sex and greed.’”

“[W]e talked about the red string my teacher had once described. [He] had said each boy in the class had such a string tied to the baby toe of his right foot, but no one could see it. The other end was always attached to a girl’s baby toe. The string was very long, and it wouldn’t break even when the boy and girl were far apart… [T]his string meant that the boy and girl were destined to marry each other.”