I hate feeling so weak and vulnerable. I hate that I miss him. I hate that I am alone, and I always was. I hate that I made him into a superhero, he was not. I hate that he doesn't want to kiss me. I hate that every time I cry over one boy it's like ...
I see it all through the lens of my camera—the flurry of movement, the venue staff in black T-shirts, giving orders into their headsets. As I take it all in, my mind weighs the texture, the composition, the possibility of each changing scene, and I...
No one wants to be poor. In my view, and the view of many authors who have focused on poverty and practical solutions to it, we need to move beyond the industrial-era paradigm of giving them fish, or even the information-era paradigm of teaching them...
Maybe man is nothing in particular,' Cross said gropingly. 'Maybe that's the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of dreams that it is true; but at the same time he does not wan...
They should not clench their fists, it’s my longing that’s drawing me near to them; they should not stand there full of rage, my longing is timidly drawing near to them; they should not be ready to pounce like vicious dogs, as if they wanted to t...
Maybe that would be less crucial under Obama, Podesta thought, because Obama's approach was so intellectual. He compared Obama to Spock from . The president-elect wanted to put his own ideas to work. He was unsentimental and capable of being ruthless...
Only a fool can be happy. For happiness consists of two contradictory elements: contentment and pleasure. Enjoy pleasure and you have no contentment; be content and you have no pleasure. For this reason happiness is conceivable only for those who enj...
Jenna is the kind of beautiful that I can get lost in. Lost from all the fucked-up-ness in my head. She’s the kind of beautiful that laughs at all my non funny jokes because she gets me. She’s the kind of beautiful that’ll put me in my place wi...
As the final computerized decade of the twentieth century came into view, time itself seemed to speed up and compress into smaller and smaller bytes, leaving less and less time over the breakfast table to ruminate on the fascinating aboriginal lore f...
Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It’s too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician’s craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenche...
We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask. What is prayer like for you? Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit? Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the bes...
The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That’s because we typically begin at the wrong starting point—ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What a...
Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping eac...
Of course, she wasn’t entirely certain what kind of man she should like to encourage. She knew she wanted someone respectable but not dull. Exciting but not dangerous. Strong but not overbearing. Loyal and trustworthy but not a lapdog. And this myt...
Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole...
If you find the dividing line between fairy tales and reality, let me know. In my mind, the two run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the bus or roaming the mall doesn't wa...
I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waitin...
No, I wanted to say, he didn't cut off her hands because he didn't have to, he had cut them off long before, with years of keeping all authority in his own palms, all the rules and all the power and all the answers emanating from him and no one else....
Married?" she practically screeched, not sounding all that pleased, which left him feeling a little offended. "We're not getting married." He snorted at that. "I may have let you have your naughty little way with me for the past couple of months, but...
Pearl was hurring around my apartment, sniffing everything, including Rich Beaumont and Patty Giacomin, which neither of them like much. "Can you get Pearl to settle down?" Paul asked. "I could speak to her, but she'd continue to do what she wants, a...
I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. ... Being a reader is sort of li...
