Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone - not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book, , and the next he was dead. , his mind echoed numbly as he ...
I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.
Writing is the art of remembering and forgetting. You must forget what you’ve already written, because if you’re dwelling on your old material you can’t write new material, and you must remember all you’ve written and read, so you are not dup...
Rumi and Shams taught us how to see the world with new eyes, how to find our place in the order of things, and how to extricate the true self trapped under layers of noise.
The present convergence of crises––in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more––is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.
Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there. It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds.
Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from ...
So many people talk about the Golden Gate bridge, but I would bet they haven't seen the new Sava River Bridge. It has long metal ropes suspending it, like a gigantic angel's harp waiting for god's fingers to reach down and pluck the first chords, to ...
Art serves a purpose. It expands our horizons, frees our minds, and opens us up to new experiences. It opens the imagination. All these great discoveries of our time — without the desire to reach beyond our boundaries, we would be forever stagnant....
There is no greater catalyst for change in a man than a woman. To love a woman is to become a new kind of man, in one direction or another. A woman holds sway over all. The right woman can assume command of your every part of your being, both body an...
You get older and you are a whole mess of things, new thoughts, sorry feelings, big plans, enormous doubts, goling along hoping and getting disappointed, over and over again, no wonder I don't recognize my little crayon picture. It appears to be me a...
I guess they knew me well, because they were right. They didn’t have to capture me. Because I was going to follow. And even if I didn’t make it out of wherever their new secret hideout was, I was going to do everything in my power to get Christin...
The last remnants of Deanna the child--the idealist, the sheltered elite--had been torn loose by tonight's tragedies, slain with the same bullet that had felled her would-be killer. She had no idea who the new person inhabiting this shell of her old ...
I knew the world too well to believe this sudden smiling. (…) The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold...
A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop. I gaped. My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small c...
We watch death and destruction on TV, in movies, over the news and online so much that it is just a part of our lives. It was never meant to be that way. In the end, we have paid a heavy price for our curiosity.
Do…you…have…a…hard…time…finding…Steve’s dick?” she enunciated, enjoying Mary’s extreme discomfort. “He’s big as a fuckin’ house so I imagine it might be a bit of a problem.” The New Jersey accent that was still there after...
Everything good or bad in my life had started and ended within the limits of that town. It was over now, though, and a new chapter was beginning. Nothing would ever be the same as it had been before. I just hoped this chapter wouldn't be the final on...
New research into cognitive functioning—how the brain works—proves that bullet points are the least effective way to deliver important information. Neuroscientists are finding that what passes as a typical presentation is usually the worst way to...
As long as you wear clothes you love, which suit your body and your personality, it won’t matter if you’re wearing a dress that was in vogue five years ago; you’ll still look amazing. Also, somebody has to START new trends, and that somebody co...