“It's why she's always switching coaches, and it's why she'd rather get third instead of second. When she gets third, at least she's happy to have placed. But second. That's too close to first.”

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”

“Why is the third hand on a watch called a second hand?”

“It's no shame in reaching second or third base if you aimed for first base.”

“Jarod Kintz likes writing about himself in the third person, because he really relates to the third person. The odd man out. If two is company, then the first person and the second person are just fine together. But why is the third person always hanging around? Jarod often feels like that outsider, the person on the smallest pedestal, the bronze medalist of personal pronouns. If the third person makes you feel like she-it, then maybe you can relate to some of Jarod’s work.”

“From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.”