Chipotle Authors, Ranked

Known for: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
Story title: “Two-Minute Dating”
Best line: “Our first event was a huge success. No one ended up together.”
Anderson’s premise (speed breakups instead of speed dating) is humorous, and the final imagery is captivating. Ultimately, however, the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would unaffiliated people pretend to break up?

Known for: The Secret Life of Bees
Story Title: “Two Minutes or Two Questions”
Best line: "Skeptical, I embarked on a youthful experiment, distilling my angst-fueled questions down to these: What makes me happy? How do I serve the world?"
Kidd’s piece is lovingly written, but doesn’t really convey a whole lot other than her life is great, and maybe (hopefully) inspiring more random Chipotle customers to read Letters to a Young Poet.

Known for: Purity, The Corrections, hating the internet
Story title: “Two Minute Driving Lesson”
Best line: “If you’re taking such an extremely short view, how are you even supposed to see a pedestrian who’s starting to cross the street?”
Franzen clearly saves all his best observations for his actual novels. This observation about the strangeness of street signs is something many people have noticed before, and Franzen fails to add anything particularly interesting to the idea.

Known for: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Story title: “Two Minute Revelation”
Best line: “The best come-on line in the world is just, ‘Hi.’”
Cute little story, but not sure “say hi to anyone and watch what happens!” is the right lesson to draw from a story of a cute guy randomly talking to a nice woman.

Known for: Unbroken, Seabiscuit
Story Title: “Two Minute Ode to Chocolate”
Best line: “A drop of rain that falls on the other side of the world, in a place whose language I may never hear, becomes sweetness on my tongue, thankfulness in my heart, words spilling from my pen, and perhaps a thought, however fleeting, in the mind of whoever reads them.”
Thinking so intensely about chocolate while eating carnitas is kind of strange, but Hillenbrand’s beautiful meditation on the history of her food can be easily transposed to a Chipotle meal. Feeling grateful while eating tasty food is always good.

Known for: The Leftovers, Election
Story Title: “Two-Minute Thank You”
Best line: Elliott told me to lose the cowboy boots. Some girls here and there said yes, I could kiss them. Burns saw me struggling and pulled me to shore."
Reminiscent of Kanye West’s “Last Call,” Perrotta’s story thanks multiple people who have helped him over the course of his life, in big and small. The barrage of micro-stories is thought-provoking and lovely, but the clutter of punctuation is a good reminder why authors like Cormac McCarthy decide to eschew all those little marks.

Known for: The Giver, Number the Stars, the first books that blew your mind
Story title: “Two-Minute Introduction to a Dog”
Best line: “If I didn’t give him my lunch he would probably be dead by now.”
Told from the perspective of a young boy begging to keep a dog, Lowry’s piece proves she is still peerless at reading the minds and emotions of young people. The use of lunch as a metaphor for love is particularly warming to read while eating, and the ending is a beautiful echo of Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Known for: The Intuitionist, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death
Story title: “Two Minutes with Amy and Tad”
Best line: “ ‘God in Heaven,’ he said, ‘it’s all Cheers!’”
When Amy and Tad can’t get the cable company to fix their box, they hire an exorcist. The result is a funny, genre-bending little story of how difficult it is to move on from the (lame, unfunny, dated) past.

Known for: Freakonomics
Story title: “Two-Minute Simple Solution”
Best line: “The world is complicated. But does every problem require a complicated solution?”
The author of Freakonomics and assorted spinoffs is well aware of life’s complexity, but in this story, he reminds us that sometimes solutions are easy and simple. Good life advice to think about while thinking.

Known for: Like Water for Chocolate
Story Title: “Dos Minutos de Amor Permanente (Two Minutes of Lasting Love)”
Best line: “I am a mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, but no longer daughter, and I long for that title coming from their mouths.”
Esquivel’s story is printed on the bag in Spanish (though you can read it in English on Chipotle’s website), but if you can read it, you’re rewarded with a beautiful meditation on love, family, and the passage of time. Perfect thought fodder for a gaze out the window at a sunny street during lunch hour.

Known for: All the Light We Cannot See
Story title: “Two-Minute Entreaty”
Best line: “We are each no more than a spark, a mote illuminated for a split-second as it passes through a beam of light.”
Doerr’s contribution is a beautiful translation of an old middle-school science experiment, reminding us how brief and fleeting human existence is on the scale of cosmic time. The right response, as Doerr notes, is not to despair at this brevity but to make the most of it. Smell a flower. Tell your friends you love them. Enjoy your burrito.