I was a stand-up comedian for 10 years, if you can believe it. And I gave it up at age 22.
A start up messed up at the foundation cannot be fixed.
Stand-up is different from television. In stand-up, you've got to be in control.
I'm not actually sure I'm grown-up enough for grown-up books.
[from trailer] Tallahassee: Time to nut up or shut up!
You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.
It's always a wake-up call to get beaten.
When all great movements are in their infancy, they are nourished basically on the mother's milk of righteous indignation. It is a time of red-faced screaming and finger pointing. That's a good thing - we need to be angry to move toward any systemic ...
There were friends all over London who would welcome his eagerly to their homes, who would throw open their guest rooms and their fridges, eager to condole and to help. The price of all of those comfortable beds and home-cooked meals, however, would ...
Instead of communicating "I love you, so let me make life easy for you," I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: "I love you. I believe in you. I know what you're capable of. So I'm going to make you work.
The Pelagianizing Romanist says, Lust, or concupiscence, brings forth sin, therefore it cannot be sin, because the mother cannot be the child. We reply, Concupiscence brings forth sin, therefore it must be sin, because child and mother must have the ...
He was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there. Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them...They weren...
He tasted like summertime - of wicked thunderstorms, fresh clover, and wild honeysuckle - and I had the sensation of falling, my stomach tumbling over and over again until calm finally reached in, rooting deep and stretching out to encompass everythi...
If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the rank...
I imagined her poised, a humerus in one hand, a toothbrush in the other, as she gently brushed away the last remnants of the person who had once used that arm to shake hands, open doors, lift a mug of tea. I wondered if it was so very different from ...
Books were seen as a waste of time. What was the point, unless you were reading for information? To lose oneself in a book was to be slightly wacky, a little greedy and ultimately slothful. There was no value. You couldn't make money from reading a b...
And except on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks wor...
Oh fair enough are sky and plain, But I know fairer far: Those are as beautiful again That in the water are; The pools and rivers wash so clean The trees and clouds and air, The like on earth was never seen, And oh that I were there. These are the th...
Does a caterpillar sit on the same leaf when it's a butterfly? No! It goes for a little fly and sees something of the world. Does the tadpole stay in the same pond once it's a frog? No! It stretches its legs, goes for a jump, explores other waters. D...
Clinging to the rags I had left, I gazed out upon the full breadth of the Furnace and shook at what I saw. The world had been wiped clean of all trace of humanity. Sharp sandstone peaks protruded into the gray sky like a humped backbone, spilling int...
My eyes glue to him in fascination as he cleans his flogger. He’s shirtless since the room is above comfortable temperature. I watch as a drop of sweat creates a path down his back, gliding around all those perfect striated muscles. The drop disapp...
