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Most people would live in an outhouse in Bangladesh before they would voluntarily move to Nebraska.
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I first came across Chadron, Nebraska, by accident in 1994.
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All my life, I never realized you could have a conversation with a ghost.
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Western Nebraska is the only place in all my travels where I have seen the dust blowing and the rain falling at the same time.
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Because I've lived a risky and unconventional life, I don't often struggle for subjects to write about.
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Chadron had a water tower, grain elevators, a tanning salon, a video rental store, a small liberal arts college, a Hardee's, a stoplight, and a curling yellow sign in the pet store window that read, 'Hamsters and Tarantulas Featured Today.'
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I'm compared to Kerouac, I suppose, because he traveled and rejected middle-class values, but the similarities end there.
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One evening, after my wife and son had gone out for a walk, I decided to have a talk with my neighbor, who I believe was murdered. I had gotten to know and admire him by listening to people talk about him. He seemed a wonderful person with much to give.
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I have learned that I am not built for conflict or controversy. I have also learned that, in all my life, I have never chosen a story. The story has always chosen me.
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There's good money in true crime, I'm told, and plenty of it lying around, but it's a devil of an art form.
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I studied a truckload of true crime, praying for illumination, but most true crime relies on luridness and voyeurism for effect.
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I'm that sensitive, honest guy who likes people, wants to know why, and who puzzles everyone by continually putting himself in harm's way.
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'Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere' took me six years to write.
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