You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there.... And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.
I’m building a hot air balloon out of my love for you. I’m starting with the hot air, and then I’m going to surround that with saran wrap, because after all, I’m only using leftovers.
I wouldn’t want the guests at my birthday party confusing my celebration with the Oscars. That’s why I’m having the awards ceremony after we eat cake and I open my presents.
Though we longed not to be lonely, we also feared the pain it would take us to be brought out of our lonely states. And after that fear, could we be guaranteed that we would never be returned to a state of loneliness again? We could not.
I am the prince of procrastination. It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after
I love the smell of my mother’s hair after she washes it. I love the feel of the scratchy stubble on my father’s face before he shaves. But I’ve never been able to tell them.
I can't even remember the first time I saw a porno. I presume I must have been shocked, frightened even, but after watching another and another and another they sort of blend into nothingness.
My task is to simplify and then go deeper, making a commitment to what remains. That's what I've been after. To care and polish what remains till it glows and comes alive from loving care.
, I told myself, watching them walk up to the pavilion. But in spite of that wise warning, I climbed out of the boat. , I told myself. But of course, I followed them. , I scolded myself, even as I tiptoed after them.
what was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.
This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.
After an hour of gliding though the crowd and two glasses of tepid wine later, Penelope had reached the spiritual state of being merrily tipsy. It was that perfect state when everything starts looking wonderful and every tragedy turns into a comedy.
He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.
If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
Give me a child until he is seven, thought Tom, and he is forever after mine. When the Fascists say it, they're bums and kidnappers, but when the Church says it, it is known as putting a kid on the right track.
After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.
Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's after image imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscure of dreams. Though their bodies would heal, their souls had sustained a damage beyond compensation
After all these years, his best friend is malaria. Even on the brink of an Alaska summer, it comes calling: a bone-deep chill one night, a ministry of sweat the next. Calling him back to old battles.
But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart.
History is a construct...Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still there are definitive moments...We can look at these events and say that after them things were never the same again.
You’re a terrible liar, boy,” Rand called after us. “Is he right?” I asked quietly, once we’d put some distance between the guest cabin and us. “That I’m a terrible liar? No. I’m a fantastic liar.
