We have all lived through that shriveling moment when a parent walks into a room and repeats, with sardonic disbelief, a couplet picked up from the stereo or the TV. 'What does that mean, then?' my mother asked me during Top of the Pops. "Get it on /...
But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. Suppose, in th...
Coming from where we do, it’s a rough adjustment—living here.” He put a hesitant hand on her shoulder, his calluses scratching against the fabric of her dress. “It’s true what they say about life in the dark ages, you know: nasty, brutish, ...
I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very wel...
I prefer not to call them demons. It demeans their nature. "But isn't that what they are?" "We should pity them more than fear them Alfred. They were angels once." "Yea, but didn't you say they rebelled against God? They got what they deserved." "Per...
It’s all right,” I said, spying what was inside his bag. “Went grocery shopping?” “I picked up a few things,” he said amicably, but then a silence stretched out between us. I got my key out, wanting to say so much more but not knowing whe...
It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactic...
No group-living nonhuman primate is monogamous, and adultery has been documented in every human culture studied- including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death. In light of all of this bloody retribution, it's hard to see how mono...
For myself, hand on heart, those things never bothered me. It is one of the graces of married life that for some magical reason we always look the same to each other. Even our friends never seem to grow old. What a boon that is, and never suspected b...
Siddhartha embarked on a mission that human civilization has been on since its inception – How to overcome pain and suffering in human life. Siddhartha was perhaps the first scientist on the planet who wanted to address pain and suffering at their ...
The hell with your secrets,” shouted Bonnie. “Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret all their life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer—and I am not speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anythin...
God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesso...
I don’t know. I don’t know, Jess,” he said as a sob shuddered through him. “Because I am a damned fool. Fuck! I have everything I want right in front of me, I love you so damned much I can’t think straight, and then it’s like…I don’t ...
... since I was still, and must for long remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which ma...
Some things a girl has in her to say no to and some things cut her down before she knows she’s gone. Sure, some twiggy, thorny snap in her says: no, this is awry, this is a bent thing, in that place that tells her to belly up to the floor before an...
Rhys—if that was even his real name—either believed what he was saying or he was a prime candidate for an Oscar. Because try as Morgan might, she couldn’t see any evidence that he was lying. He had to be crazy then, but everything about the who...
I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house by moonlight. "There is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist whom you will read in time to come asserts that there i...
He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who had lived and moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they no longer see it transfigured by the longing or repu...
I don't so much mind looking back on having lost the election, or having been denied a role in the play, or having had my novel repeatedly rejected, or having been turned down for a date, or recalling laughter at my expense when I attempted some sill...
Sometimes... I feel like I can't picture him anymore. Like I'm forgetting him... I forget the way he looked when he smiled. The sound of his voice. The way his hand felt wrapped around mine. And it hurts so badly, Jack. It hurts so fucking bad. Somet...
What does it do?" said Loeser. "You feel as if you're being sucked down this fathomless, gloomy tunnel. Or to put it another way, it's as if all the different weights and cares of the world have been lifted from your shoulders to he replaced by a sin...
