For as long as I could remember, other people had either overshadowed me or left me out in the open, alone. But Mac, as Layla had said all those weeks ago, was always somewhere nearby. He left me enough space to stand alone, but stood at the ready fo...
At Yale, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd grown up in Newark. In Newark, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd go...
Unbeknownst to me, from the beginning of freshman year Rob and Oswaldo had been drawn away from Yale via their friends on the dining hall and custodial staffs, outward into the city of New Haven. Rob considered these excursions a much-needed dose of ...
The word "fronting" was important to Rob. A coward who acted tough was fronting. A nerd who acted dumb was fronting. A rich kid who acted poor was fronting. Rob found the instinct very offensive, and in college he saw it all around.
Somewhere in the notes Estraven wrote during our trek across the Gobrin Ice he wonders why his companion is ashamed to cry. I could have told him even then that it was not shame so much as fear. Now I went on through the Sinoth Valley, through the ev...
How does one hate a country, or love one?... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to al...
He says, "I would walk around the township and I could point them out, which girls had been abused. You could see it in them. There's a luminosity to incest. The taboo is so strong and the damage so great. Luminosity--do you understand? It travels ac...
I hate my left hand. I hate to look at it. I hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. But I look at it anyway; because it also reminds me that I'm going to find the boy who took everything away from me. I'm going...
Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someon...
The past is but an untraceable footfall It appears in intervals and pushes us back in time, In those moments of grief and then suddenly vanishes. It’s often dark and ruthless. It baffles our thoughts and seizes our peace of mind. By making us recol...
A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud...
[on the Tiger Moth, Louie is escorting Pazu to the Tiger Moth's engine room] Louis: Work, work, work. Busy, busy, busy, busy. Left, right, left, right. You're not here to have fun. [inside the engine room; we see the gears turning] Louis: As you can ...
John Dunbar: Who would do such a thing? The field was proof enough that it was a people without value and without soul, with no regard for Sioux rights. The wagon tracks leading away left little doubt and my heart sank as I knew it could only be whit...
Left Head: Halt! Who art thou? Minstrel: [sings] He is brave Sir Robin, brave Sir Robin, who... Sir Robin: Shut up! Nobody really, just passing through. Left Head: What do you want? Minstrel: [sings] To fight and... Sir Robin: Shut up! Uh, n-n-nothin...
Voice: We've been told about these wonder weapons the Germans were working on - long range rockets, push button bombing, weapons that don't need soldiers... Patton: "Wonder weapons"? By God, I don't see the wonder in them. Killing without heroics? No...
CWO Dan Jollata: [Spots Somalis with RPGs and firearms] Art; I've got Skinnies with RPGS! Twelve o'clock! Crew Chief: [to Medics roping down] Go! Go! Go! Crew Chief: Roger; give me 90 degrees to the left. [Black Hawk rotates 90 degrees to the left wh...
This was the lesson we kept learning over and over and over, the lesson our mother was best capable of teaching us. Love—whatever else it might or might not be—was fleeting. Love stormed into your life and occupied it, it took over every corner o...
You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that ther...
Oh, what had she done?" He'd startled her; that was the problem. It was all his fault he was lying on the ground, looking rather cherub like, his blond hair curling about his ears, his bright blue eyes closed now, his masculine lips parted slightly a...
All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left.
Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.
