On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passerby, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half-closed against the glare, as if they were drench...
Rosy lifted her arm, tried to say something, then pointed at the cafe, held her head, covered her mouth and—humiliation of humiliations—she began to cry. Right there in the street. “I’m so confused,” she said but it came out as a great honk...
In our family "whim-wham" is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and '80s - when they were all straight depression - we called them "dark nigh...
It was one of those moments in which I become very uncomfortable. One of those times when nothing you say can be right, and almost anything you do say is wrong. I could see no answer but the classic Croaker approach. I began to back away. That is how...
I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job. It's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bi...
Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your...
When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or w...
I felt the fangs against my neck and knew I was going to die. It was horrible. I wanted to live so, so badly...but this was how it would end. With my last moments, I started to yell at Christian to run, but then the Strigoi above my suddenly lit up l...
Dads. Do you not realize that your child needs to feel your skin on his? Do you not realize the incredible and powerful bond that skin on skin contact with your daughter will give you? Do you not understand the permanent mental connections that are m...
Then I started to think in Lipp’s about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d’Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assign...
A friend’s 14-year-old niece was asked by her teacher what she wanted to be when she finished school. The teacher asked her to think hard about it and then get back to him with an answer. She didn’t know what to say to her teacher. A friend, on h...
...In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say "But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as cluele...
I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or d...
I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in ...
So Sonia was not my only or even my first best friend. She was the last. It wasn t that I hadn t made friends since just that I thought myself past the age of that particular kind of friendship. Adult friendship doesn t grant you an exclusive isn t m...
Cam held her closer. "Marry me, Amelia. You're what I want. You're my fate." One hand slid to the back of her head, gripping the braids and ribbons to keep her mouth upturned. "Say yes." He nibbled at her lips, licked at them, opened them. He kissed ...
As it is there isn't a single thing isn't an opportunity for some 'alert' person, including practically everybody by the 'greed', that, they are 'alive', therefore. Etc. That, in fact, there are 'conditions'. Gravelly Hill or any sort of situation fo...
No,” he replied, firmly, smoothing her hair back from the side of her face. “I'll never leave you alone again. You've spent too many years always having to be the strong one, never having anyone to rely upon. It stops now, Taylor. What I heard ch...
Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can ...
Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed sc...
The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame [...] The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lo...
