There's only one of him, she thought, and he's right here. He knows I'll like a song before I've heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors fo...
At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most dece...
I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
I could just as easily have taken the train.” He shut his eyes, just long enough for a movie of a Tess-induced train riot to screen on the backs of his eyelids. Fists flying, teeth broken, friendships destroyed as men vied to get closer to her lush...
And our ages never bothered her from the very beginning. I was married, but that didn’t matter, either. She seemed to consider things like age and family and income to be of the same a priori order as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one�...
Everyone has to start somewhere,' he says, his eyes dark and smoldering, his fingers seeking the scar on my face. The one on my forehead. The one that's hidden under my bangs. The one he has no way of knowing about. 'Even Picasso had a teacher.' He s...
The trouble with me is, Treece thought, that I'm a liberal humanist who believes in original sin. I think of man as a noble creature who has only to extend himself to the full range of his powers to be civilized and good; yet his performance by and l...
Despite a few exceptions, I have found that Americans are now far more willing to learn new names, just as they're far more willing to try new ethnic foods... It's like adding a few new spices to the kitchen pantry.
I made up three lists: Candidate's Accomplishments (real and imaginary), Accusations Against Opponent (including rumours, allegations, innuendos, and lies), and Empty Promises (the more improbable, the better). Then it was merely a matter of taking v...
Maybe that would be a good thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure, and that bothered him more than anything. How was he meant to judge right from wrong when he had never really striven to do right before? The only good thing he had known was his time w...
The image of him shifted with the violent frenzy of leaves. He was there and he wasn’t, as the leaves whipped and the lightning fell away in a slow strobe effect across the expanse of sky. How he had gotten up there, I had no idea, but he had been ...
My association of jail to high school is probably on the basic similarity of a communicable social-setting. These few settings represent a frame of reference: a somewhat fraternal order (though I never belonged to an actual fraternity) where people c...
I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the loss of bodily presence and the gain of ghost messages....
...I thought, with a certain amount of sorrow, how much enormous talent there must be in the world for nature simply to toss it away so arbitrarily! But nature could not care less what we think about it, and as far as talent is concerned, there is su...
My hands tightened on her, and I again tried to memorize every part of this moment. There was such perfection in the way our bodies were wrapped together. It didn’t seem possible that outside the sanctity of this moonlit car was a world we had to h...
Advice, then, young yeoman: When referring to the king's middle daughter, state that she is fair, speculate that she is pious, but unless you'd like to spend your watch looking for the box where your head is kept, resist the urge to wax ignorant on h...
It's a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god's handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There's not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungai...
Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Be...
Anybody else think that was weird?' Shane asked as they got into the car. Eve sent him an exasperated glance; the three of them were, of course, in the backseat. Amelie had the front, with Michael. 'Ya think? In general, or in particular?' 'Weird tha...
I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth...
But that was all bravado. Already - how had it come about so quickly - desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. No...
