I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing -- then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husba...
Listen: I don't have anything against autobiographies, so long as the writer has a penis that's twelve inches long when erect. So long as the writer is a woman who was once a whore and is moderately wealthy in her old age.
A brick could be used as a doorstop. But that’s obvious. What isn’t obvious is why somebody would want to stop a door, since doors represent openness. What is that person hiding behind that door that they want to stop people from opening it up? I...
(Regarding check-cashing places): It's hitting me how poor this really is: I'm standing in a long line to pay someone to give me my pay. So, technically, they get paid before I do, and it's my damn check.
The strange thing arched its serpentine body to bring its head closer to the bear, all of its many eyes staring straight at him with alien curiosity. The thing looked at the bear. The bear looked at the thing. "Oh well," said the bear. "Made a plan. ...
The ritual worked. That is the most ghastly thing. I hold no particular brief for the rationality of the world, but that this vile obscenity should actually have the power to bring back the dead seems to me not merely a sign that the world is not rat...
Putting the dream in motion involved significant personal downsizing, moving three times to trim housing expenses and continuing to freelance. I sold one piece to The New York Times Magazine, many more to The Courant, and another to The St. Petersbur...
A robin perched on the branch of the apple tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing. 'No need to look so down in the mouth,' he chirruped. 'Things'll get worse before they get better.' 'I don't know what it is about that tree,' Geno grumbled...
I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and bl...
It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up—it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out g...
My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, b...
It's easier to make up stories than it is to write them down. When I speak, the words come pouring out of me. The story wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair, crosses one leg over the other, says, Let me introduce myself. Then just st...
I really loathe [the bumper sticker] 'Proud Parent of a Terrific Kid!' Why not a bumper sticker for the unlucky parents, something like: 'My Fifteen-Year-Old's in Detox and Not Speaking to Any of Us' or 'My Kid Robbed a 7-Eleven and is in a Center fo...
Bricks could be used to promote social progress. If we could amass enough bricks to build a prison big enough to cage every citizen, then everybody would be equal. And I think our current political leadership is savvy enough to see this, and is takin...
I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn...
Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct the...
Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.
If a blanket could be used to keep one person warm, then it stands to reason that all the blankets in the world are to blame for global warming, and I think our political leaders, with all their wisdom, should confiscate all blankets and burn them. T...
But it's a changeable world! When we consider how great our sorrow , and how small they ; how we think we shall die of grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what busi...
I fear that we live in an ahistorical age in which we believe that we are so wise that we no longer need the lessons of the past, perhaps most disturbingly of all that technology has put us beyond the lessons of the past.
I tended to be hard on the egos of a certain kind of men. The ones who normally swept women off their feet had never moved me much, because I'd always felt that if they swept me off my feet they'd practiced on a lot of women before me, and would prac...
