The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it...
You his brother?' 'Yes, damn it!' I burst out. "And all I want is to get my hands on whoever did this to him!' 'Funny,' said a dick dryly, 'but so do we.' I didn't like him much after that. Sarcasm is out of place when a man has just been brought fac...
I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it...
I didn't bring you here," he said. "You think you're Miss Special Destiny of the year?" "No," I shot back, furious. "And I don't damn well to be - whatever the hell you are. But sometimes there isn't a choice. Right?" "Careful. You might accidentally...
Even the damned can dream - infact, it's part of their torment. To escape, even for a second or two, to forget reality and drift, only to be yanked back into the waking world like a fish caught on a line... Yes. In some ways that's even worse than to...
One day comes after another and another and pretty soon you realize that yesterday was pretty damn long ago and that everything you had hoped for is never going to happen. You can’t control it any more than you can control that big wave from gettin...
He put the knuckles of his fist to the table, leaned toward Niles and spoke quietly, cuttingly, in his rough, gravelly voice. “Fucked her last night, man, and this morning. Five times. Five. It was like she hadn’t been touched in a decade. So fuc...
Joel’s face swam across my vision and I blinked, goose bumps running up my arms. I shook his memory away, determined to stay focused, although my heart caved at the thought of his last words to us, right here in this very spot: Take care of each ot...
Five seconds, and my body's humming. I go half-man, half-machine, and my thoughts go straight to touching her more, to how far I want to go, how far she might want to go, and damn, I start to hurt. No amount of music or hard work will fix this. My bo...
I don't believe in writers' block. Do doctors have 'doctors block?' Do plumbers have 'plumbers' block?" No. We all have days when we don't feel like working, but why do writers turn that into something so damn special by giving it a faintly romantic ...
(Regarding check-cashing places): It's hitting me how poor this really is: I'm standing in a long line to pay someone to give me my pay. So, technically, they get paid before I do, and it's my damn check.
It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I l...
One o’ clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man. Four o’clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the ...
There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rush...
I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special lit...
I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn...
I rose swiftly and struck him across the cheek, hard enough to make my palm sting. He gaped at me. 'I do not want your damned money. I want you to answer me.' Carefully, he fingered his jaw. There was something new and strange in his gaze, sharp, int...
I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and b...
It's a damn shame that when I finally fall in love that it had to be after I died." He dropped his head and shut his eyes. Oh, mylanta. Did he just say what I think he did? He looked back up at me, taking my breath. "What are we gonna do?" I knew wha...
If you spend your life on a moral hill-top, you see nothing but the mud below. If, like me, you live in the mud itself, you get a damned good view of clear blue sky and clean green hills above. There's none so evil-minded as those with a moral missio...
Throughout the course of the day, Bobby Tom's irritation over his artificially oiled and dirt-smeared chest and his unzipped jeans had flared into righteous indignation. They were treating him like a sex object! It was damned demeaning, that's what i...
