To retreat into oneself and meet nobody for hours on end—that is what one must be able to attain. To be alone, as one was alone as a child, when the grown-ups walked about involved in things which seemed great and important, because big people look...
Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the ...
I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously ...
I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life...
If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who...
When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried alo...
Hermes's eyes twinkled. "Martha, may I have the first package, please?" Martha opened her mouth ... and kept opening it until it was as wide as my arm. She belched out a stainless steel canister-an old-fashioned lunch box thermos with a black plastic...
You know that movie, where the little boy says 'I see dead people'? The Sixth Sense. Well, I see them all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. That's what's ruined my mood. Here it is, almost Christmas, and I didn't even think about putting up a tr...
Rory's big labradoodle made a snap judgement that Frankie was everything her life had been missing up until now. She flung herself into the girl's arms, wiggling and whining, a shaggy mass of chocolate-colored enthusiasm. "Mistral likes you, I see." ...
Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers- Plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun's warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life's stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or una...
Great. He was a hottie, a good kisser, and a literature buff. God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn’t know, that wasn’t taught in ...
We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 millio...
..we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To ha...
The chairs - turned towards one another in groups of twos and threes - seemed like the seats of ghosts in close conversation with one another. There were sets of two chairs - very close to one another - in the far corners of the room, which spoke of ...
If we can expect another journey tomorrow, we should secure horses," Ferrin went on. "And if the sun will be shining, perhaps a goat for Aram." "Keep it up," Aram dared him through clenched teeth. "Is a goat too large and unruly?" Ferrin asked? "Mayb...
I hope you read this, whoever you are, and imagine that there is a hypothetical person out there who needs your love, has been waiting silently, patiently for it all his life, is flawed and downright ugly at times and yet would have just eaten up any...
Fan would have expected that one or two of the Girls would have long rebelled at spending a life in a room, would have begged, say, the dentist, to help them steal away, but the funny thing about this existence is that once firmly settled we occupy i...
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing i...
Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring mus...
You think I am very cute, you think me sexy, as well. I can read your thoughts, remember.” I hoisted myself up and slid across his body. You are conceited, arrogant, and domineering, everything I dislike in a man. And you are independent, stubborn,...
It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The bo...
