This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you." He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea cam...
One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You ...
…There’s forty-two thousand jobs, near ten thousand of ’em got by people like us. Everyone’s gotta eat. Industry feeds ’em. They figure Little Bear here’s gonna clean it up." He squeezed his baby, a dimpled plump girl with tufts of jet-bl...
Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I’d sat down at her table and said, “Mind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece.” Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Iva...
I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these acquisitions; but without either he was considered, except in very rare instanc...
For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressi...
Under fun’s new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff a...
For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person...
Often things happen to race cars in the heat of the race. A square-toothed gear in a transmission may break, suddenly leaving the driver without all of his gears. Or perhaps a clutch fails. Brakes go soft from overheating. Suspensions break. When fac...
As far as I can figure, the way that it works is this: everyone has something that happened to them. The thing that we each carry. And you can see it in people, if you look. See it in the way someone walks, in the way someone takes a compliment, some...
The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bo...
The world is a very, very fine place. It wasn't a mess. It didn't need to be conquered and ruled by man. In other words, the world doesn't belong to man - but it does need man to belong to it. creature had to be the first to go through this... creatu...
You might want to do something about your neck.” I was totally lost. “My neck?” She reached into her purse and handed me a compact mirror. I opened it and surveyed my neck, still trying to figure out what she could be talking about. Then I saw ...
John Milton has, since his own lifetime, always been one of the major figures in English literature, but his reputation has changed constantly. He has been seen as a political opportunist, an advocate of 'immorality' (he wrote in favour of divorce an...
I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and...
One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was returning from a journey to a patient(for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door...I was seized with a keen desire ...
Most people think Marv is crazy, but I don't believe that. I'm no shrink and I'm not saying I've got Marv all figured out or anything, but "crazy" just doesn't explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he's retarded, a big, brutal kid who never learn...
I don’t want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I’m not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies.” She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked ...
There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place ...
I hadn’t gone to Andover, or Horace Mann or Eton. My high school had been the average kind, and I’d been the best student there. Such was not the case at Eli. Here, I was surrounded by geniuses. I’d figured out early in my college career that t...
A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms ha...
