When I am running I inhabit and exit my body in the same moment. I bear witness to the harshest of physical sensations, even while I feel myself flying free and away. I do not want to remember what has happened to me. I do not want to reflect on the ...
A walk with a two-year-old is very Zen; it is not about the end but the journey. He needs to pet the dog someone is walking; to roll down the slight incline to the church basement, and then roll again, and again, and again; to remind me of the place ...
It's easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see the edges and the lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me)...
With wine and being lost, with less and less of both: I rode through the snow, do you read me I rode God far--I rode God near, he sang, it was our last ride over the hurdled humans. They cowered when they heard us overhead, they wrote, they lied our ...
I'm here!" I said..."I'm read to go home!" As if they couldn't see me. As if I couldn't remember what it had been like, fluttering next to someone's ear and whispering into it. How the whole earth was like a musical instrument that we could play effo...
The lieutenant’s fooling around again with the telegraph girl at the station,” said the corporal, after he had gone. “He’s been running after her for a fortnight and he’s always frightfully furious when he comes from the telegraph office an...
I once met an RAF pilot who told me of what he called a "bird strike". This, rather unfairly in my view, made it sound as if it was the bird's fault; as if the little feathered chap had deliberately tried to head-butt twenty tons of metal travelling ...
what is the matter with me? Am I too particular? I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have to--you'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself--no love, no kindness, no respect!
I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They're ready now, I think. So... they appear before us as part of their redemption." "But you and I, we weren't to blame, were we?" Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the ...
A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, An...
You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
You know cats, always scratching on this or that, but never scratching what you want when you want it. (Like my balls, when they’re itchy!) I recently got him declawed, which sucked for him, but it was great for me because I was tired of always bit...
Master, take me in along with these people." Jesus answered and said, "Your star has led you astray, Judas.
What are you and Henry going to do tonight anyway?" "My secret," I said, and when I walked around to see the look on her face, I rolled my eyes. "Not that. What are you and Xander going to do?" "That." She gave me an impish look, and I scowled. "What...
The moment he left the warm sheets and the door clicked shut, I had that feeling you get when you are lost in a strange town at night. I curled into the chair where he had watched me undress and tears wet my cheeks. Then I dried my eyes, I looked in ...
I care," he said in a trembling voice. "I care so much that I do not know how to tell you without it seeming inconsequential compared to how I feel. Even if I am distant at times and seem as if I do not want to be with you, it is only because this sc...
Order for Jarod,” she said as I walked over to pick it up. This was it, this was my moment. Rebecca has a smile like silk sliding across freshly shaved skin, and she always leaves me no choice but to smile back at her. I can’t control it; my l...
I keep a pen clipped inside the right pocket of my jeans in case I’m ever attacked by a man wielding a sword. I remember another comment Zelda said about me: “He thinks he’s a writer. He couldn’t write the alphabet, even if you spotted him...
It’s 3:33 am as I’m writing this down on loose sheets of printer paper. I’m in the back office sitting behind the manager’s desk, just enjoying the good life. In essence, this job enables me to be a real writer, because here I am writing, and...
After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sens...
