…a bar he sometimes sneaked into called The Slab. (They served bloody marys and zombies – stiff drinks they called them – and the jukebox only played dirges. A spotlight pinned dead go-go boys in cages, and though he’d never ventured to the r...
You never know what you're going to get with a pinball game," John said. "It's a lot like life. You can't control it, so you have to just roll with it and do the best you can. And if you do well enough, sometimes you get a bonus play.
You think your children are better than mine? Ha! When yours were out playing with gold, mine were out fighting for survival. You taught your children to roll in money when I taught mine what it means to be strong.
Find someone else to toy with. We both know I lack experience, so I don't know how to play the game without getting hurt. Besides, I hate games. I prefer knowing straight up what's real and what's bullcrap.
I wish my nipples spiraled around and could play records. I could spin love songs while you made love to me like you were a DJ.
It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is an...
The sacred stillness of your brilliant heart has as the myriad wonders masqueraded. But if you knew this secret from the start, then you'd have quit this Game before you played it.
So often, she had found herself transported by music. She would get lost, lose herself to the time and fullness of the tones, the way it conjured up air around her as she listened or as she played. But this, she thought, one did not get lost in this ...
Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He ...
What an odd thing it is to see an entire species -- billions of people -- playing with, listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call 'music.' (-- The Overlords, from Arthur C. Clarke's Chi...
She tapped out a beat on the edge of the piano as I tripped and plummeted through the refrain of “Spacebar,” trying to translate the synth chords into a piano bit on the fly. It had been a million years since I’d played it. But it was still cat...
The young man looked down from the cart at the people in front of him. Jonah felt his teacher’s eyes meet his own, and for a fraction of a second a smile played on the prisoner’s lips. Then he glanced toward heaven and spoke. “I only regret tha...
Her parents could have named her Aria, or Harmonia, or Tessitura, or a hundred other clever names that would have alluded to her ancestry. But they weren't for her, these names that roll or sparkle or play or simply proclaim, I am normal! No, it was ...
Why is it that at the very moment I need to appear graceful I stumble and fall like a klutz, as though this scene had never played through my mind differently a million times?
Do it again. Play it again. Sing it again. Read it again. Write it again. Sketch it again. Rehearse it again. Run it again. Try it again. Because is practice, and practice is improvement, and improvement only leads to perfection.
The best stories come from deep within us and are of us. Either our inner child comes out to play and makes all things possible, or we mold our characters and events from our own experiences, or our dreams of wanting to experience.
We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death
Strike two. Add dumb as a box of rocks to the list of why I don't like these guys. I got to my feet, deciding to play nice. After all, they were just poor dumb guys who couldn't help it that there weren't enough brains in their genes.
it's good to have things done with when they don't work it's also good not to hate or even forget the person you've failed with.
As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana...
An untied shoelace can be dangerous,' he said. 'I could have tripped.' She stared at him. A moment dragged by. 'I'm joking,' he said at last. She relaxed. 'Really?' 'Absolutely. I would never have tripped. I'm far too graceful.
