However, Nick acted as much as possible under the circumstances, and that was rectifying — it brought with it enjoyment and a working faith. He had not gone counter to the axiom that in a case of doubt one was to hold off; for that applied to choic...
A mistake? The most passionate night of his life was a mistake? Her first time and that’s what she thought. That grated on him in the worst way. “Is that what you think, Beth?” “Don’t call me that.” “Why, Beth?” “You know I hate tha...
You took a life and the theft went unpunished. God didn't strike you down. The sky didn't fall. The morning after, you turned on the faucet and water still came out... It was still good when you raised your arm for a cab and one came towards you out ...
Product Warning If this book were a medication with a label, it would read something like this: Side Effects Include but Are Not Limited to renewed sense of self-esteem increased motivation in all areas of life You may also lose weight, fall in love,...
Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matt...
Somewhere, deep within me, beyond the passion, beyond the beauty of the night, that little spark of Daily magic ignited in me again, began burning in a place that had gone dark and untended, that had yearned to be bright and warm. I felt it now, some...
Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s ...
It doesn't have any effect on your life. What do you care?! People try to talk about it like it's a social issue. Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say, 'How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?' ...
In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the pos...
Whatever else she’d been on the verge of saying lodged in her throat as if her mind had suddenly registered what he'd meant. A solitary tear crested and trailed unchecked down her cheek. Oh, hell. At that moment, he'd give his life to take away the...
I hated you,” she continued, “because you have done nothing more than abide by rules that every gentlewoman follows every day of her life. Yet for this prosaic feat, you are feted and cosseted as if you were a hero.” She felt nothing as she spo...
Most people can hardly imagine what it would be like to be at peace with inner disturbance. But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. If you feel insecurity, it's just a feeling. You can handle a fee...
There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthe...
When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend ...
They say that depression makes you see everything in a negative light. I disagree. It makes you see things for what they are. It makes you take off the fucking rose-tinted glasses and look around and see the world as it really is- cruel, harsh and un...
Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have...
Failure to use tax money to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called ‘censorship.’ If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose wh...
Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"-...
Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples," she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones...
Mom, how do you know if the guy is guy?” You mean if he’ll be a good husband?” She pauses, then says “The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him.” Shouldn’t it be equal?” Mom cackles. “It can never be equal.�...
eriously, Drew. What kind of Vampire are you? You spend most of your eternal life pretending to be human - and miserably, I might add, while constantly being ashamed of what you really are. Okay, I get it. I moaned for over a decade when I was turned...
