Short stories have no net. The writer cannot take a leisurely sixty pages to get things moving, or make a side trip onto a barely related subject, or slack off in the last forty pages. Everything is right now, right here, in the reader's grasp and mi...
I wanted to tell a dream-come-true story about going from a closeted gay kid who loved pop culture to an out adult man making pop culture. I went from being told when I was 21 that I should never go on TV because of my crossed eyes to winding up bein...
He smiled against my cheek and kissed me again. "Talking with you would be much more enjoyable than talking with Talia, Lilly." His eyes scanned the floor by my feet. "She's paint by number; you're watercolor." Things like that, moments like those, h...
All girls say men are the same but I'm different, I don’t like calling girls hot or sexy because to me calling a girl that means you’re looking something of them. So I like using the word beautiful because beautiful is a very strong word and I fe...
I've told you, there's no point keeping those. They're not tax-deductible,' my dad thundered. 'I think you'll find they are,' raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps). 'They're not. You only get VAT back on lunches outsi...
Nonetheless, with tears coming to her eyes she was also recalling every time that she had been cruelly teased and bullied for no reason that she could relate to. None of it had ever been physical, yet somehow the names she had been called, and the re...
What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which gave its wintry glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I remembered no one who had ever lived and ...
What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince. “You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will ...
Rub your eyes and purify your heart-and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act...
If God spares us as a father does his son, let us imitate God. It is natural for children to imitate their parents. Let us imitate God in this one thing: As God spares us, and passes by many failures, so let us be sparing in our censures of others; l...
A page of a book is like a human face. Look at a page by Hemingway and compare it with Sterne and Marcel Proust. They are different typographical beings. But force upon them those ragged edges, and the influence of the author’s style on the physica...
Love is blind. sometimes so myopic eyes to see which ones need to be sacrificed which ones to be saved. romance was deaf, ears sometimes so faint to hear where is counsel where is incitement Passion was mute, sometimes mouth can not speak. let alone ...
Every working mother has the things she dreads, things that keep her up in the night – pink eye, an ear infection, the parent-teacher conference, the school play – all forcing her to remind the people she works with that she is not, in fact, whol...
When you give in to bullies, you don't just empower them, you encourage whatever methods they employ to achieve their ends; usually terror and violence. Meaning it's the innocent who pay; mourners at a funeral in Baghdad, a group of Coptic Christians...
A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But list...
Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scen...
Isabelle - "She laughed out loud, not able to recognize her own voice. She found her situation suddenly hilarious. She laughed and laughed at the door. Just a simple, silly, stupid door had her trapped. And now the ones that had been closed so long w...
And strange were the tales of the pond in the meadow, And eager we listened with eyes opened wide To Those tales often told by poor Mary the widow, Who lived in a cottage the meadow beside. Play not, my dear boys, near the pond in the meadow, The mer...
I wanted, I told her, to lie under the stars and smell different breezes. I wanted to drink different waters, feel different heats. Stand with my comrades atop the ruin of old ideas. Plant my boot and steel my eye and not run. I said all this to my d...
Who will you love if not yourself? Other people? How can you love someone for anything but their raw, naked humanity? How can you say you love someone if it is not for their flaws and quirks, snorts and hurts, triggers and tears? Anything else is not...
The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted very well with the op...
