I have a list of pet names for Cap’n so long that it could fill a phone book (if the phone book is for a town with a population of four). I call him Cap’n Boy, Sweet Boyo, My Little Boy (done in a British accent), and when he is misbehaving, You ...
You know cats, always scratching on this or that, but never scratching what you want when you want it. (Like my balls, when they’re itchy!) I recently got him declawed, which sucked for him, but it was great for me because I was tired of always bit...
It also must be hard to have a wife like Mrs. Indianapolis. She’s in the fashion industry. She’s not a model or designer, but she is a buyer—not for a retail outlet, but for her four closets, whose combined square footage is probably comparable...
And if I’d been a good boy that day, I’d get to eat Chlorella for dessert. Chlorella is condensed algae from Japan that looks like green hard candy pieces, about the size of Smarties, and I guess it could be considered candy, if you think beefing...
I can’t tell you how much I love kissing ass. Especially wealthy, cellulose-stippled ass. But I’ll smile as big as a personified yellow circle and assure the hiring manager that I was born to serve. I’ll tell him that while other kids wanted to...
Sometimes I put on a black scuba suit and go walking on the beach, to relax. If I could, I’d sleep in a scuba suit—on a waterbed. Not that I actually ever get in the ocean. Too many dangerous things in the water, like barracudas, sharks, and of c...
It’s a shiny tin can of a day, bright but gray. Welcome to one of Florida’s two overcast days per year. A Florida winter can last a brutally long 48 hours, and in that time the state’s residents don’t know how to cope. Probably there are more...
Order for Jarod,” she said as I walked over to pick it up. This was it, this was my moment. Rebecca has a smile like silk sliding across freshly shaved skin, and she always leaves me no choice but to smile back at her. I can’t control it; my l...
I keep a pen clipped inside the right pocket of my jeans in case I’m ever attacked by a man wielding a sword. I remember another comment Zelda said about me: “He thinks he’s a writer. He couldn’t write the alphabet, even if you spotted him...
It’s 3:33 am as I’m writing this down on loose sheets of printer paper. I’m in the back office sitting behind the manager’s desk, just enjoying the good life. In essence, this job enables me to be a real writer, because here I am writing, and...
Most—but not all—of the writers I knew then were young men who cherished their independence, were unconcerned about job security, and were serious about their writing. They didn’t want to be anyone’s employee if it interfered with their writi...
If you are going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed.... In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal.
If you are working with authors, you are accepting a great responsibility and must tread very carefully. The author's work is a part of herself, a creative endeavor she has poured her heart and soul into. Protecting and nurturing that work and the au...
John Mitchell: [on phone] You tell your publisher, tell Katie Graham she's gonna get her tit caught in a big wringer if that's published. Ben Bradlee: [later] He really said that about Mrs. Graham? Carl Bernstein: [nods] Ben Bradlee: Well, I'd cut th...
I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got ...
Every town has ‘THAT house’: the one that once held dark secrets. You know the house… the one no one will purchase? The one whose walls have seen blood? The one that even birds avoid, and the darkened windows resemble empty eye sockets? There a...
grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold us the mirrors how to reflect us the walls how to contain us grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell a house that blows into the air at the s...
At forty-three, I bought my first house. I’d wanted one like crazy. A house meant family, a happy childhood for my litttle girl and for the little girl self inside me. . . . I was soon overwhelmed by the upkeep and overcome by the yardwork. . . . I...
A small house will hold a hundred friends.
The house of danger is built upon the borders of safety.
When the master is absent, the frogs hop into the house.
