I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West. There were hospices and medical supply stores geared to people with AIDS. It seemed that every sick man who could afford it had headed for the warmt...
I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning argum...
Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's...
I'm not a person who naturally loves to wake up in the morning and go 'Yeah, I'm going to work out for five hours - wooh!' Like, that's not my thing. I'm from Texas. I like to eat carbs. I like to chill out with my friends and do anything but 150 pus...
I remember telling my second-graders the basic 'Metamorphosis' story, saying, like, 'What about - what if a guy woke up one morning and he was a bug? Wouldn't that be weird?' And they loved that. And I think that was the trigger that made me think, l...
We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after fou...
The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have been tired for decades. I am tired in the morning and I am tired while becalmed in the slough of the afternoon, and I am tired in the evening, except right ...
One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the d...
My mom told me to stay away from gangs. But if you're asking me about immigration reform, it must accomplish two objectives: Border security must be first, and it must be more than a promise. We have to import workers, not welfare. Anyone who wants t...
When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa...
I made an awful mess of my first marriage. It was hard to live with me being me. I was so abnormal. I mean, most writers struggle. I hadn't struggled. I couldn't suddenly go down to the PEN Club and behave like a normal human being, because most of t...
These days we seem more bound to our bosses than ever before. We even identify our own selves with the jobs we do: 'What do you do?' is the first question we ask each other at parties, as if a job title could express a fundamental truth about our per...
...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to t...
I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
The longing to behold this pre-established harmony [of phenomena and theoretical principles] is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which has devoted himself ... The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind...
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it w...
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The onl...
The best that has given us was likewise an exclusive production. If he had not created his geometry of surfaces, which served as a basis, it is scarcely conceivable that anyone else would have discovered it. I do not hesitate to confess that to a cer...
The importance of for the development of modern physical theory and especially for the mathematical fundament of the theory of relativity is overwhelming indeed; also his achievement of the system of absolute measurement in the field of electromagnet...
If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation r...
We had a few tragic accidents in our state, as they've had in every state, from train crashes on down. And really, no text is worth dying for; that is our message to young people. And this is such a new phenomenon when you look at the number of texts...
