Where’s Nadine?” “She went out for a walk the other day and didn’t come back.” “Really.” I tried to sound surprised. “No sweat,” he said. “Pussy may well be the only true renewable resource, Leo. I’ve got another one lined up fo...
So much of the inexplicable about the Soviet experience—the hatred of the peasantry for example, the secrecy and paranoia, the murderous witch hunt of the Great Terror, the placing of the Party above family and life itself, the suspicion of the USS...
So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?" she asks. "Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?" "I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to ...
The best compliment came from Knopf's Sonny Mehta. We were at lunch in New York with my editor, Gary Fisketjon, it was my first time meeting Sonny, and after ordering our food, he turned to me and said, 'Adam, I read 'Mr. Peanut' in two days; every p...
About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I c...
I grew up very differently than a lot of other people in my hometown in Mississippi. But I can't imagine my life any other way. I flew home and surprised my best friend at his graduation, and I remember turning to my mom and saying, 'My graduation wa...
I generally don’t become overexcited about things anyway, I’m just not one of those people.I’m not easily surprised by things either. I think it’s because I expect that anything can happen. That makes me sound like a believer and I’m not ne...
I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, ...
Jesus, you never fail to surprise me, baby.” He’s supporting the heavy bike, and us, with his strong legs braced on either side. He reaches between us and rips my yoga pants at the seam of my crotch. Holy fucking shit! My panties are next, and be...
During my last year of college I wrote the same ten pages over and over again. Those ten pages became the first few pages of my first novel. I can still recite the opening paragraph from memory - only now I cringe when I do it because they are - surp...
That's coral!" she cried in astonishment. "We must be down in the deeps of the sea!" Well, wasn't that what you wanted?" said the trout. "I thought you wished you could see the sea!" I did," said Jane, looking very surprised. "But I never expected th...
So Lorenzo grew up in Chile without arms, an unfortunate situation for any child, but he also grew up in Pinochet’s Chile, which turned unfortunate situations into desperate ones, on top of which he soon discovered that he was homosexual, which mad...
I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also been long listed for the Man Booker prize, I have to admit that my response has confused me. I am so overwhelmed, so delighted, so h...
The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. ...
Its funny whenever people who have'nt seen me in years meet up with me again and they are surprised that I'm not as shy and quiet as I was in the past, I credit that to my years of drinking at bars and partys and conversing with people I would never ...
I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going ...
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and y...
Green heard her voice, murmuring, and Adrian’s, murmuring back. Something inside of him made an actual glass-cracking noise—and before he could convince himself that that it was his imagination, Blissa and three of the other nymphs danced through...
Song after Battle: As the young men went by I was looking for him. It surprises me anew That he has gone. It is something To which I cannot be reconciled. Owls hoot at me. Owls hoot at me. That is what I hear In my life. Wolves howl at me. Wolves how...
We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeate...
When we find ourselves in a situation in which our buttons are being pushed, we can choose to repress or act out, or we can choose to practice. If we can start to do the exchange, breathing in with the intention of keeping our hearts open to the emba...
