There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of i...
Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel. Maybe folks don’t trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God’s got to remind us he’s alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Ver...
A life thus names a restless activeness, a destructive-creative force-presence that does not coincide fully with any specific body. A life tear the fabric of the actual without ever coming fully 'out' in a person, place, or thing. A life points to .....
You don’t know what it means to be betrayed! Should I explain it to you? It means to be treated like trash and your feelings get stepped on… you get hurt over and over again and in the end you are left alone! Can’t you see how much I care for y...
Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there’s no anchor from the r...
Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip y...
When you sneak into somebody’s backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Cur...
A rural Venus, Selah rises from the gold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweeps petals of water from her skin. At once, clouds begin to sob for such beauty. Clothing drops like leaves. "No one makes poetry,my Mme. Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,” ...
Everything was temporary; she understood that now. All of this was temporary. It would all be snatched away. It was all on loan. Even the people we love. They were all on loan. One day you see their face across a rickety table or you pass them hurryi...
The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are: You have no right to defy me or leave me. Your life is in my hands. Women are evil and have to be kept terrorized to prevent that evil from coming forth. I would rather die than accept your right to in...
None of the characters in (the story) were distinguished ones -- not even the lion. He was an old lion, prepared from birth to lose his life rather than to leave it. But he had the dignity of all free creatures, and so he was allowed his moment. It w...
Have you ever been writing something when you just forgot where you were, and what time it was, and you kept diving down deeper into your words? No, it's more like diving down your words--past them, and way further down into someplace out. In fact, i...
There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn't. When we are objective we are subjective too. When ...
Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one...
You aren’t falling apart. You’re well beyond that. You’re just rattling along now. Elven dolls doing what little you can to gather the pieces as they fall away. But you don’t know how to properly reattach them—a doll does not repair itself....
That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves...
I had a dream about you. We got into an argument over the toilet seat. Down, up, down, up, down, up, we each thought we were right. Finally, being a natural diplomat, I suggested we compromise and leave the toilet seat halfway between down and up. Yo...
there’s nothing to discuss there’s nothing to remember there’s nothing to forget it’s sad and it’s not sad seems the most sensible thing a person can do is sit with drink in hand as the walls wave their goodbye smiles one comes through it a...
Outside, I could smell the Zebra. Even if for some reason I stopped feeling cold or hot or rain or sun, I bet I could close my eyes and still tell which season I was in just by the smell of the trees and dirt there. Spring was sweet mud and flowers. ...
Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, const...
Gro Rollag was no beauty, but she was a strong capable young woman with a long face, prominent cheekbones, high forehead, and a kindly intelligent look in her rather narrow eyes. According to family lore, she was not the most conscientious housekeepe...
