Her face is silting up, like a pond; layers are accumulating. Every once in a while, when she can afford the time, she spends a few days at a spa north of the city, drinking vegetable juice and having ultrasound treatments, in search of her original ...
Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she’d get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the...
She had never been so affected by the idea of intimacy, but there was something about his eyes; something warm, and gentle even though she felt transparent every time he turned his attention on her; like he could see her, really see her. The idea of ...
At the sound of my name, those two worlds on either side of me collide, and my lips meet his. Time ceases to exist, and so, apparently does any logic that my mind is hanging on to. Logic would say that this is insane; every other fibre of my being sa...
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in hims...
Every person has one particular time in his life when he is more beautiful than he is ever going to be again. For some it is at seven, for others at seventeen or seventy, and as Laura Fleischman read out loud from Shakespeare, I remember thinking tha...
The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely ...
It's simply about gratitude and honor. It's about finding the joy in each of life's little facets, even the ones that are otherwise considered mundane. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess. Each day can be as joyous as you want to make it. Every...
Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bone...
Colm was a good sleeper. But if there was one sound at night that should wake him, and any sensible man who loved his family, it was the barking of dogs. The noise was coming from the village. It was not just one or two dogs, but surely every mangy c...
i do not say 'good-bye.' i believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one....
I've always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home myself. I've worked hard at being the hero of my own life. But every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn't know how to belong. Longing? Y...
What's knocking on your door...opportunities to succeed or opportunities to fail? Times may get tough, life may not be fair, but never allow fleeting disappointments to corrupt your attitude and your plans for the future. Self-pity is a destructive f...
My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook.
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...
I look up to my brother - he inspires me so much. He has always been my best friend. He knows everything. I left the house at 16 when I auditioned for 'American Idol' and he was 14. It was one of those things that was so sudden and neither of us expe...
[T]he people who are close to Allah worry so much about wasting time that they call themselves to account for every breath they spend - how many of us wonder about how we spend our day, let alone each breath?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a word is worth a million pictures. A billion. As many as there are people who know the word. Each has their own picture, their own meaning of it, in their heads. It's theirs. It's unique. And yet the...
Never invite someone who is speaking a foreign language in your presence to "Go back to your country." The only time that phrase is every acceptable is if you are British and you are speaking to Madonna.
For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes m...
