How can a school prepare you for murderers and mad-men?' Taro asked. 'Friends who would betray you to your death. People in authority who use their power to perform the most unnatural acts. People hating you because you can't do things you aren't sup...
When someone you love...when they die, you want it undone. You'd do anything to have them back, and it's easy to believe that if only this had happened or that had happened, everything would be fine. And that's what makes you angry. What makes you ha...
...Why haven’t we had sex in six days?” “Because you have a bullet wound.” She cocked her head. Devin braced himself for the barrage of bullshit she was about to spew. “Last I checked, I didn’t get shot in the pussy; I got shot in the arm...
In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, "Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?" But for all tha...
Then why do we do so many bad things? He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us—and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much—is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose ...
It was so screwed up, because the thing that made us the most powerless also gave us such power. We could make them turn away. We could bother them and challenge them and mess them up. You think people are afraid of two boys in love? To hell with tha...
I’m so sorry,” I continue. And it’s like the last word is a hurdle and I can’t leap it, because something in the word snags my voice and suddenly I am giving everything up. I am letting my shoulders fall and I am feeling myself become the abs...
When I saw the women ranged in the windows, when I saw their calculating looks, assessing my purse...and other things, I realized I didn't want any of them in my bed." ..."That's why I left, princess," he rasped. "Because I realized it was you I want...
I don't believe that math and nature respond to democracy. Just because very clever people have rejected the role of the infinite, their collective opinions, however weighty, won't persuade mother nature to alter her ways. Nature is never wrong.
It hit me like divine inspiration. Religion is the greatest graft ever invented because no one ever loses money claiming to speak for the invisible man in the sky. People already believe in him. They already accept that they owe him money, and they t...
I was crying on the back-porch swing. You came out with a corsage of fresh forget-me-nots and roses, and a handkerchief. You told me any guy worth my time would always come to me with flowers and a handkerchief. One to make me smile, and the other to...
Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid... I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions - only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry...
Prayer is the hardest thing. And no one congratulates you for doing it because no one knows you're doing it, and if things turn out well they likely won't thank God in any case. But I have a feeling that the hardest thing is what we all better be doi...
In the end, it doesn’t matter, but I wanted you to know; I needed you to know because I read your text to Sarah. You told her I was everything you never thought you could have, and I’m telling you, you’re everything I never knew I wanted, but I...
I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where ...
The feeling of righteousness is the core mood alteration among religious addicts. Religious addiction is a massive problem in our society. It may be the most pernicious of all addictions because it’s so hard for a person to break his delusion and d...
Comrades in the struggle! The position of modern man is not merely lamentable; one might even say that there is no condition, because man hardly exists. Nothing exists to which one could point and say: 'There, that is Homo Zapiens.' HZ is simply the ...
Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such i...
I had a dream about you. My pee was cloudy, and I brought an umbrella to the urinal. You were the Coach of the Men’s Room, and you were giving me advice on how to be a better weatherman. But I didn’t listen, because I was the arrogant five-time M...
I had a dream about you. You looked like a real shark in your dolphin suit. I looked like the referee of the animal kingdom—the zebra—as I was dressed like a stack of Oreo cookies. For once I just wanted people to want me for me, and not because ...
I had a dream about you. You were my main competition for the 2014 Rocking Chair Race Championship Series. It’s the most movement you can make without actually moving anywhere. I won that race—and I lost—because no surprise, we all tied.
