Freud was a fraud, but he’d probably think I have a complex of some kind. Anal, oral, Orafoural, etc. While most kids wanted to grow up to be an astronaut, one of Barbara Streisand’s bras, a priest in sheep’s clothing, or an IRS employee, I alw...
Then the silence came back, that awful silence that seemed to just take over. In that silence I kept hearing what I had said--heard it repeating itself over and over again like a stuck record. I wanted it to stop. I didn't want to say things like tha...
You know," said Sydney, after a sip. "I kind of can taste some citrus in this. Just barely. Like a hint of orange. And it's sweeter than I thought, but that'd make sense if the guy said it was late harvest varietal. Grapes retain more sugar the longe...
Mercy is to care, and care very deeply about one another. It is to care to the point where we are prepared to be involved with the sufferings and adversities of others. It implies that I am prepared to put myself in the other person's place. It means...
I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word...the entire complex, fascinating bundle of all the things you are. I want you with ten different kinds of need at once. I love all the seasons of you, the way y...
I was still alive. Ha! Take that kidnappers. Still alive. Maybe it was my butt that was feeding me. I always thought it was kind of round. I bet my body was eating up all the fat stores from my butt now. Yeah. See, having a big ass is a good thing. G...
When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother lo...
Sunny laughed. "It's okay. You're right, Emma. My name is unusual, but I like to think of it as... special also." Special? Sam cocked his head as he studied Sunny. Almost all of her hair had escaped out of her ponytail now. She wore a baggy pink swea...
And maybe I’m a liar and I do need it, because being kissed by Josh Bennett is kind of like being saved. It’s a promise and a memory of the future and a book of better stories. When he stops, I’m still here, and he’s still looking at me like ...
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my m...
In fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the rotary pho...
You might think of the barrier between fiction and reality as being a bit like a blood-brain barrier, which allows only some kinds of molecules to pass from the bloodstream into the brain. Emotions can easily pass from the fictional world into the re...
Mark raised his eyebrows, ‘you don't know the half of it,’ he further mumbled, more to himself than in reply to Frankie. ‘But listen up; because this isn’t about me anyway; this is about you, about how you need to sort it out, yeah? This is a...
With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind." What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have bee...
Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. “You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the fut...
Stop! Ok, seriously, how old are you two? You’re acting like teenagers instead of old ass immortal men!" “Well, yea we are kind of old, but we’ve been around so long, we don’t have anything better to do. Living a long time can really turn you...
It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty b...
Perhaps our judgement of the purple woman was unfair. No doubt her theories concerning the "approach of the Teatro" made us all uneasy. But was this reason enough to cast her out from that artistic underworld which was the only society available to h...
What do you mean, is that it? I just saved his career and the CIA from ruin and he calls me a perfidious ass." "What's perfidious mean?" Ace asked from the driver's seat. "You deceived him and stole his girlfriend out from under his nose," Julia said...
One should preach not from one's rational mind but rather from the heart. Only that which is from the heart can touch another heart. One must never attack or oppose anyone. If he who preaches must tell people to keep away from a certain kind of evil,...
Don’t pass along the beliefs and actions you disapprove of to your children. Loving-kindness is potent even when displayed during the so-called mundane tasks of daily existence. It’s so potent that if everyone could get into that mindset for a mi...
