There is no such thing as unrequited love; the phrase ought to be stricken from the lexicon. Love is a thing shared, an intertwining of essential separateness into something not quite alone. There is nothing like it under the heavens. Like bread, it ...
Is he well educated?" "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important th...
We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something el...
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing e...
Dreams aren't finish lines to be reached at the close of a race. They don't suddenly materialize, fulfilled, where the road ends. The entire journey is included in the dream―all of it from beginning to forevermore. You're on that journey right now;...
She stood above the sink and broke the Swarovski glass frame – a wedding gift – with her hands. Her thumb got cut. As blood drops fell into the sink, like mercury balls she thought, she lit the photo on fire. Ashes fell into the sink. Fire and ve...
You have a long history," he said, when Lanya indicated her story was finished. "Ah, Harrier, were I to tell you a long story, we should be here for a sennight, perhaps more. Long stories are best saved for deep winter, when the days are short and ti...
When you do your research write down whatever interests you. Whatever stimulates your imagination. Whatever seems important. A story is built like a stone wall. Not all the stones will fit. Some will have to be discarded. Some broken and reshaped. Wh...
The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had ordered three weeks ago. Each day, some further evidence of a task hal...
And now if you'll excuse me, I should like to finish my book, alone, without the presence of a single ringleted girl to disrupt me. If you should come for me at dinner and find me in my chair, gone to the angels at last, you shall know that I died al...
You know what's awkward?" David asked, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Our entire existences?" Now the grin was real. "That," he acknowledged. "And when you make a big, dramatic gesture because you think you're going to die, and then you-" "Don't d...
I’m 100% certain of the quality of story I’m writing until I finish the outline and actually begin to write. At this point, I’m 100% certain the story sucks and I will never show it to another living soul. Until I type “THE END.” At this po...
She'd just had the best sex of her life, with an ex-boyfriend she'd spent the last decade pretending didn't exist, in his adorable half-finished, renovating-by-himself one room schoolhouse. Unsettled wouldn't even begin to describe how Laney should b...
Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employment...
I could hear the knock and whistle of the water pipes, the purr of the calico cat. And at that moment a happiness filled me that was pure and perfect and yet it was bled with despair - as if I had been handed a cup of ambrosial nectar to drink from a...
We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we wan...
The other night my grandpa stopped breathing. I thought he was trying to set a world record for holding his breath, but after ten minutes of me cheering him on, he had to be boring and go and die on us and totally spoil our dinner. The good news was ...
I had a dream about you. You was a crocodile and i was always looking for you with fear. Your teeth were alabaster and your skin green as grass. Unfortunate you had already a girlfriend. And i hoped she finish like a handbag. I love you from my all r...
The moment this is over, you're mine," Diesel all but groaned, keeping his eyes on the road so he wouldn't pull over and take her right there. "No, wolf, you're mine." the look on his face went immediately from lust to yearning. "That's right," she s...
The moment this is over, you're mind," Diesel all but groaned, keeping his eyes on the road so he wouldn't pull over and take her right there. "No, wolf, you're mine." the look on his face went immediately from lust to yearning. "That's right," she s...
I read John Irving's novel 'The World According To Garp' when I was about 14 or 15. It was the first grown-up book that I had read. It is the story of a young man who grows up to be a novelist. I finished it, and I wanted to write a book that made th...