One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.
Anton Chekov in a letter to AS Gruzinsky, 1 November 1889

OUTSIDE THE CHICKEN shop, a policeman shows me his gun. He shows me because I ask. I am thirteen and learning that men say yes when I ask them for things, and so I am learning to ask. I think I am learning that I have a fearless mouth.