I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don’t know why they’d decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a ...
Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at...
Ik rende naar de badkamer en kotste alles er boven de wasbak weer uit. Dat luchtte op. Ik spoelde mijn mond en strompelde terug naar het bed. Even later hoorde ik mijn vader roepen: 'Shit, Max, shít! Kon je het niet even opruimen?' 'Pa,' zei ik, 'ik...
It's funny how people think that they have "a right to life". Now isn't that the biggest load you ever heard? You don't have a right to shit your pants on Sunday. Let's take it back to the jungle. Where the fuck are your rights there? No layers in th...
The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to de...
Do you know why hurricanes have names instead of numbers? To keep the killing personal. No one cares about a bunch of people killed by a number. '200 Dead as Number Three Slams Ashore' is not nearly as interesting a headline as 'Charlie kills 200.' D...
These days, I strive to be a bitch, because not being one sucks. Not being a bitch means not having your voice heard. Not being a bitch means you agree with all the bullshit. Not being a bitch means you don't appreciate all the other bitches who have...
What if, instead of being afraid of even talking about death, we saw our lives in some ways as preparation for it. What if we were taught to ponder it and reflect on it and talk about it and enter it and rehearse it and try it on?What if, rather than...
Acting is such a desperately futile profession anyway. Playing out the lives of other men. Knowing of their failures and successes long before they ever do. Living, suffering, murdering, dying … all in the space of three hours. Sometimes only two. ...
Cut! Go again." And again, and again, and again. Finally, after the fourth of fifth take I yelled down the hill to the director: "This isn't a fucking marathon! If we're going to go again, tell him on the bloody bike to slow down." David turned to me...
Many things shaped my identity as a young boy: a strong selfworth (something that was instilled in all three Barrowman siblings by our parents), my immersion in theatre and music, and my DNA. I was born gay. It's not a choice I – or anyone else who...
She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side...
When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation ...
So he could not be hasty or impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path. God placed them along my path. He had surprised himself with the thought. Until then, he had considered the ...
He knew that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things. One could open a book to any page, or look at a person's hand; one could turn a card, or watch the flight of birds... whatever the thing observed, one could...
My father told me never to take my foot off a ladder to kick at someone who was kicking at me. When I did that, I would no longer be climbing. While they are kicking, my father told me, I should keep stepping. They can kick only one time. If I contin...
I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told y...
After Jesus showed up, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up. Of course, just because Jesus replaces the Old Testament doesn't mean that you should necessarily skip it. That would be like skipping j...
If you really think there's a Santa, why don't you sit on the front steps all night in the freezing cold and see if he climbs down any chimneys tonight. Good luck. And since we're a family that isn't lucky enough to have a chimney, how would Santa ge...
I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Break...
I told her that I can't be doing with the Wonder part of these trips, but she said it should be the icing on the cake... I've never liked wedding cake due to the amount of icing, but then imagine a wedding cake without it; just a dark, stodgy, horrib...