Ambulances were cool. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT as I picked up a silver gadget that looked disturbingly like an alien orifice probe, broke it, then promptly put it back, hoping it wouldn’t leave someo...
Where is my chance to be somebody's Peter Van Houten?' He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his head back, looking up. 'I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hat...
See, don't just look. Your partner is so much more than their appearance. It's how kind their heart is, how lovely they smile, how much they care and have compassion, how generous and giving they are which becomes much more attractive.
There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woma...
She worried that maybe they'd been dating too long to end up together. It was like when you tried to jump off the high dive and if you did it right away, you were fine. But if you stood there looking down, thinking of all the bad things that could ha...
Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say somet...
Now you look here. All your father ever dreamed of for you was to do something you loved in life. He didn't care about fancy qualifications or fancy clothes or cars, just that you were both happy and fulfilled. He was so excited about your dreams for...
People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be...
Our culture is obsessed with perfection, especially when it comes to the way women look. The parameters of acceptability as far as physical appearance go are so limiting that only a handful of women actually fall into this category. And the rest of u...
Just give me a bit, let me pretend you're still alive," Andrei said hoarsely. "Let me pretend that I don't have to give you up." "Andrei," Warm, calloused hands cupped Anrei's face. "Look at me. I'm real. I'm still with you. A part of me will always ...
A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that you...
And that was the point I knew I just loved this filthy, ugly, loquacious man in a fur coat, who would spend the day roaming all over town, looking for bright lights, and laughter - and then at night come on stage, and unbutton two buttons on his wais...
Also, I think I felt something come loose back there. I'm not trying to overreact or anything but I think it was my uterus. Honest. I think my uterus jiggled free. My uterus is just going to come out between my legs and I'm going to look like I'm wal...
As we stand there, it hits me how quickly everything changes - how life is like peering into a kaleidoscope, and just as you're looking at a gorgeous pattern you think you'd maybe even like to keep around forever, the colors morph into something comp...
I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, ...
In taking that photograph, I understood something I will never forget: how I wished to arrest all the beauty that came before me. Not the classical beauty of symmetry and exact proportions or the fancy of fashion, which is ever-changing with the seas...
If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae.
Linsey pulled away, smiling in a way that would have made him look almost angelic if it wasn’t for the blood smeared around his mouth. When he licked his lips clean, the angelic image became clearer. Blood welled up from two small cuts on his botto...
I’m not that kind of Indian,” Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up i...
Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something...
It's goddamned funny in this police racket how an old woman can look out of a window and see a guy running and pick him out of a line-up six months later, but we can show hotel help a clear photo and they just can't be sure.' 'That's one of the quali...
