I read that Monica Seles got stabbed. And although I have nothing against Monica Seles, I'm glad somebody in sports got stabbed. I like the idea of it; it's good entertainment. If we're lucky, it'll spread through sports. And show business, too! Woul...
She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more until people rang to complain. Nor did she check her answering machine messages. In fact, it had only been in the last year that she had finally boug...
With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to...
1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. ...
We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and...
I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset. "Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come ru...
A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines....
On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches...
You said we've got a new page. I figure I've got some say in what gets written on it. So I'm going to work on you. Last time around, you threw yourself at me.” “I did no such thing.” “Sure you did. But I can see I've got my work cut out for m...
How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the str...
And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and s...
Humph.” She peered down suspiciously as he parted the leaves to reveal the choke. “That doesn’t look very tasty.” “That’s because it isn’t,” he said. “Pay heed: the artichoke is a shy vegetable. She covers herself in spine-tipped le...
And now the thought came to me that I lived much of my life through the pages of books as well. That perhaps I, too, was only a paper figure. A cut-out, or silhouette. Flat. I always thought I knew the shape of my life. Of course I thought I knew abo...
We have been cut off from our souls in the West, and because romantic love has become our religion, we think we can find fulfillment through this extraordinary and powerful force that draws us into an illusion of permanence. Passion makes us feel ali...
I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched ...
I walk in the direction she tells me. I feel my pores opening, sweat and heat radiating out of my body. A firefly dances in the distance, leaving tracers, and if I turn my head from side to side, I see long yellow-green streaks that cut through my vi...
Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we...
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that col...
Day had gotten a little nervous during one session when the doctor asked God how he would handle someone hurting Day now and his lover responded by jerking one side of his leather coat open and pulling his long blade from its sheathe. “Easy, I’d ...
I can see how I could write a bold account of myself as a passionate man who rose from humble beginnings to cut a wide swath in the world, whose crimes along the way might be written off to extravagance and love and art, and could even almost believe...
Because you are not scared to admit out loud that you're afraid. Or to ask questions... and because you know that your husband is in pain, you will go to him and not threaten his ability to provide with words that cut and burn in another's mind forev...
