“I write stories that are only one sentence long,” I explain to you as I plant this book like a time-bomb in your public library, “because imperfection is easier to tolerate in small doses.” With unparalleled wit and wisdom, Gary Lippman’s We Loved the World But Could Not Stay is a collection of intricately constructed single-sentence stories that chronicles the outrageous and the everyday with insight and empathy, all while reimagining and reorganizing the very concept of the story and the basic building blocks of our language.